Sorry for the long thread title but it's exactly what happened today for me. I made that call, I told my boss that my car had a major problem.
There is more on my blog about the problem, so I won't bore you about that. I'll just say that I do now have a car for tomorrow morning, so I can get to work at the crack of dawn.
My boss is lovely (have to say that don't I as she is a mumsnetter 
) but honestly she is lovely, in a time of crises she doesn't seem to panic, least that's how it seems to me. Maybe she does panic really... it can't be good to have an employee call in to say they probably be at work in the morning.
What would you do if your nanny called in to say they couldn't make it in? Do you have any contingency plan for such a thing happening?
In the case of a car breaking down you would probably want your nanny to make as much effort as possible to get in to work. I've certainly been known to got to via taxi but that is far from ideal, as I need my car to drive the children to school.
With a nanny, you don't have backup if something goes wrong - do you? Things do go wrong at times, hopefully not often but it can happen.
Do you have a backup plan? Have you ever had to put it into practice? Should nannies have some sort of backup - if so what?