My wife and I had our first child last year and it's been quite an intense few months. My wife has been on an extended 'maternity leave' but on top of that, we've also hired a nanny/maid to assist us with the baby as well as keep the house in order.
She stays in our guest house. To celebrate our anniversary I planned for us to take a trip by ourselves just to reconnect and give her some proper time away from our son.
She was excited about leaving but was slightly concerned about leaving our son behind (her mother was going to come down and babysit with the nanny). Trying to ease things I asked the nanny if she'd be willing to come along with us on our trip and take care of the baby - stressing that this was supposed to be our couple vacation so most of the childcare will be hers and more than usual.
She jumped at the idea and so I also arranged her ticket and accommodation (to be clear she was also paid extra for the 'overtime'). The trip was a week long and our arrangement was going quite well at first. My wife was relaxed, we reconnected and our son was close by for whenever we missed him. We would take our son and give her a break either in the mornings or afternoons.
On our last day, she asked if we could take the night shift as she'd met someone who'd asked her on a date. Besides that going against our arrangement (the point was to give us a break from the sleepless nights), I'd already paid and planned an intimate date on the beach with my wife for our last night.
It became a bit of an issue with her trying to guilt my wife and saying we were being unfair but by the end of it, we didn't give in and she looked after the kid. Upon returning my wife heard her on the phone saying that she was thinking of quitting over all of this and that we were blocking her future so here we are.
Wife thinks we made a mistake, I don't disagree that it might've been AHolish but ultimately it was our arrangement and she was paid extra for it. Are we the AHs?
thirdtryisthecharm wrote:
INFO: It's a week-long vacation. What day(s) does she get off? Or how are you compensating her for working 7 days a week? You are parents 24/7. She is only a nanny for the hours you pay for.
You needed to specifically negotiate what hours you are paying for here in advance, not just expect her to be available, and I'm unclear if that happened.
tiny-pest wrote:
YTA. Don't care how much extra you paid. You told her more childcare. A few hours off a day is not more childcare. That's abuse.
She had a right to ask for a night off. Nanny or not to expect someone to pretty much take over 24/7 when they are not the parent is insane. She is a nanny and has no kids. You needed a break even with a nanny, but yet expected her to handle it all. So it was your vacation. You invited her to watch your child but gave her no chance to do anything. So you paid her accommodation and ticket.
DogDisguisedAsPeople wrote:
YTA - unless you paid her 8hrs a day at 1x and 16hrs a day at 1.5 (so 4x her normal “day rate”) you grossly underpaid her. You yourself said you only paid her 2x.
She deserves to fire you as her client, you’re a terrible boss!
Fit_Squirrel_4604 wrote:
So you made her stay up all night with your kid and gave her a few hours off in the morning or afternoon? When was she sleeping?
whenitrainsitpours4 wrote:
Talk about some first-world problems. Yes, YTA for not allowing your Nanny an evening off. She's an employee, not your slave. If you don't want to be responsible for taking care of your own kid on any sort of regular basis, then hire a rotating staff of nannies instead of expecting one nanny to devote 23 hours of her day.
NTA. You paid for her trip and overtime and knew the expectation was for her to watch the baby. This wasn't a work trip for her not her vacation. I am sure that if she requested a some time prior to the trip, then the hours she requested could have been arranged, but for an impromptu date on the last day of the vacation is super unprofessional.
The post has been up for 12 hours at the time of writing this and this is the first time checking in since the first hour due to life but I just wanted to clarify some things I've seen come up.
1. She got paid double her usual daily rate. Since she has consistent our daily we just refer to it as daily rate where she 'works' 8 hours. So we paid her for 16 hours of work daily.
2. Our expectations were very clearly expressed to her and she agreed that it wouldn't be a problem. Depending on our plans, some times we took mornings and sometimes we took afternoons but on any given day it was one of the two.
This was also preplanned since our trip had an itinerary. Each of these breaks averaged about 5 hours and that excludes the spontaneous breaks whenever we missed him and prepared him for bed.
Also this assumption that my wife and I can't and don't take care of our child is silly. The nanny is there only to assist whenever my wife needs to nap/rest. My wife takes care of most of the childcare and I step in when I get back from work. Most of her [maids] work is housework.
My wife is staying in home because of her traumatic birth which had complications she's still recovering from. She fully plans on returning to work when she's fit and our child is old enough.