We live in central London. She was with us for 18 months. Her English was okay, but her accent was very thick. She was a 40 year old Ghanian woman and she also spoke french. Thick accent in French too, apparently. But regardless I think she's amazing for speaking more than one language as I can't. (accent thing is relevant btw, not just me being a cow..)
She told us after a while that she wanted to work as a PA and not with children anymore. As we considered her part of our family we gave her time off to search for a job, and we even introduced her to a few other people who might have a PA job to offer (actual companies.) We continued paying her full-time salary throughout this, even though she was only working three days a week while she looked for another job.
Everybody (who we introduced her to) said that neither her English nor her french was clear enough to take on such a communicative role in an English-language or French-language speaking company. They all also said she had no previous experience as a PA, and should gain some experience before applying again. All these companies were in central london.
We suggested to her that she becomes our nanny and our PA combined , gets some experience and moves on later. She said she didn't want to do that, she wanted to work in the office of a central London company, she wouldn't accept to move somewhere else in England. She said that she would resign and job-hunt without having to look after the DC during office hours.
We said, okay, bought her a present and wished her well. We kept in touch and saw her a few times socially where she said hi to the DC. She emailed us a lot after she left asking if we could introduce her to more companies to be their PA, but we had exhausted the people we knew so couldn't help her. She didn't seem to understand why we couldn't be the answer to her problems.
It's been a year now, and she has done lots of work experience in offices, but she doesn't have a job. And she hasn't had a salary since we last paid her, apart from some babysitting and overnighting she is doing in people's homes as a childcarer on sitters.com - and she is on benefits.
We have since found a new nanny and are very happy with her. But ex-Nanny has now come back saying she feels really desperate and really needs our help and her job back in order to pay her rent, but still maintains she wants to work as a PA eventually.
I feel quite torn because I am all for people holding on to their dreams and working towards them. She and I are the same age, so there is a lot of me imagining myself in her situation and knowing that if I tried to get a job as PA in central London now (I currently work for myself) after having 3DC, then I'd probably be having trouble too.
But I'm also aware of my own privilege. Being married and having two salaries, being white, being in the country I was lucky enough to be born in and only having to speak my mother tongue. So there is a side of me which is tempted to send her some money, or offer her some work as a PA to DH and I (we both work from home) to help get her to where she needs to be.
The other side of me feels that she has acted quite entitled and that her expectations are out of whack with reality?
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in my assessment of whether our ex nanny is being reasonable in her expectations in life?
68 replies
confuseduntildinnertime · 05/07/2017 18:11
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