To expect my au pair to open the door?

[alice298]

I just can't work out if I am being unreasonable or not... The other day I said to my au pair "if you hear the doorbell, please open the door as I'm expecting a parcel." I actually assumed if she heard the bell she would open it anyway as I think anyone living under a shared roof would automatically do so. But I asked specifically as I am 1. Deaf so often miss the bell, and 2. Have a newborn so am often trapped under a boob monster. Anyway, she said that when she is not officially on duty, she will not open the door unless she happens to be walking past or making a cup of tea (etc). She said she won't leave her room to open it.
I couldn't believe we were having this conversation, but didn't want to lose the plot already being deeply hormonal and emotional. So I just said - "okay please let me know when you're having a period during which you can't open it so I can make sure I am near the bell," and she said no, she didn't know when the mood would hit her not to open it so she didn't feel able to pre warn me.
I felt so upset by all this. I left it at there as I just couldn't bear to discuss it further, I didn't even know what to say. And now I find it hard to look at her in the face as I feel it is extraordinarily unkind, as well as selfish. But AIBU? If so I would love rational thinking so I can get over my current feeling of dislike towards her. I really want to be happy with her and get on with life, and finding it very hard to do so.
Thanks in advance!

If it's any help l am hearing impaired and my bell flashes. I also have a separate portable unit but that just has sound

"The OP has said til she's blue in the face that she doesn't expect the au pair to be 'on alert' for the bell at all times, just that if she happens to hear it she'd appreciate her answering it."

Well I don't think the OP is really clear about what she wanted. She asked the AP to answer the door, I think, and asked if the AP could specify times when she might not be available to do so. The AP didn't want to specify times and didn't want to be responsible for the door when not working and in her room. No matter how many times the OP says "I didn't ask her to listen out for it" there is an element of outrage there that the AP, in her room, and not working, is not....listening out for it. The OP hasn't worked out her own expectations and feelings, which are inconsistent, and it amounts to the fact that she thinks she should be able to ask the AP to do work and also be allowed not to own that she is asking her to do work. Part of this upset is that the OP is being challenged her view of herself as a "nice person" by not getting the chirpy smiley agreeableness that increasingly is demanded of people nowadays.

If you didn't want her to listen out for it in her room, OP, what is so awful about the fact that she didn't promise to listen out for it, while in her room?

The OP said "if you happen to hear it id be grateful if you would open it"

which seems quite clear to me, and also not at all demanding. 'IF' being the operative word.

it amounts to the fact that she thinks she should be able to ask the AP to do work and also be allowed not to own that she is asking her to do work.

It's not exactly work, not when the context is that this is someone who has expressly asked to be treated as one of the household in other ways; it's just a common-sense thing that surely most people would happily do, to help out everyone who lives there.

HowBad sorry but your thought experiment is flawed. The thing pissing off OP is not because she is the employer, it's because they are both adults living in the same house. When you reverse it, it does sound unreasonable because deafness and breastfeeding a little baby ARE legitimate reasons to not get the door. But the au pair is only refusing out of bloody mindedness!

If the door was ringing all day, then yes, she might have a point

You're expecting it to ring once, if she hears it, great she can walk a few metres and open it. If she doesn't hear it or is in the bath or whatever, then never mind.

What on earth is the problem for so many people?

No idea MissGinty. It's baffling me too.

HowBadIsThisPlease I've really enjoyed your posts on their thread. They made me challenge my thinking on this issue, and see why actually, it is an issue!

You're expecting it to ring once, if she hears it, great she can walk a few metres and open it. If she doesn't hear it or is in the bath or whatever, then never mind.

But is it really never mind? AP misses the bell because she is listening to music. OP is then going to be like 'oh the parcel man came, didn't you hear the bell?? I asked you to listen out for it' and the AP is the bad guy.

"When you reverse it, it does sound unreasonable because deafness and breastfeeding a little baby ARE legitimate reasons to not get the door. But the au pair is only refusing out of bloody mindedness!"

No, you don't know this. you don't know why the AP is refusing and you are assuming it is bloody mindedness because you have decided that the the OP (lady of the house, employer) is more worthy of respect than the AP. So one person who doesn't want to get up (I've cooked eggs and swatted wasps - at the same time - with a boobmonster in a sling - so it is "doesn't want to" - and there must be a solution to the doorbell / deaf thing, unless the OP only became deaf last week and hasn't worked it out yet) - is more important than the other person who doesn't want to get up (we don't know why, it is none of our business).

AP could "explain" - smirk, shift from one leg to the other, wriggle out of it with a mixture of lies and truths, stuff about family disasters and emotionally overwrought phone calls that have to take place, health issues, sleeping issues, various tragic matters of personal vulnerability - and it would probably have been better received. This is what I take issue with, really, the sort of soft soapy accountable to everyone-and-no one situation that we have nowadays where people can be hoofed out of a job for not being emotionally compelling enough, yet vague smirky incompetence is tolerated (even while blatantly dishonest) as they are a "nice person"

AP misses the bell because she is listening to music. OP is then going to be like 'oh the parcel man came, didn't you hear the bell?? I asked you to listen out for it' and the AP is the bad guy.

The OP DIDN'T ask her to listen out for it. She say 'I went on in course of conversation to say I didn't expect her to listen out but to open if she did happen to hear it.'

"The OP DIDN'T ask her to listen out for it. She say 'I went on in course of conversation to say I didn't expect her to listen out but to open if she did happen to hear it."

This is kind of meaningless. It basically means "If you don't want to answer the bell, which I've now warned you to expect and told you I expect you to answer, you have to lie to me and tell me you didn't hear it".

When I was a child (in the 70s and 80s) my mother (who was a child in a doctor's house in the 50s) taught me to answer the phone telling callers "I will see if she is available" so that if it wasn't urgent and she was up to her eyeballs in shampoo or pastry, she could temporarily avoid the call without anyone actually lying. I feel like this reserve, this unaccountability to any tom dick or harry, is being lost with all the over-emoting that everyone is expected to do all the time - and it is a shame - and it doesn't make us actually nicer, more compassionate, or more responsible people. I feel like the OP expects the AP to be more emotionally sensitive to her, so it isn't just about who answers the door - she's now backtracking from expecting her to listen out for the door as this is blatantly unfair - but what she wanted, whether or not the door was opened, was a more head-tiltingly sweet kid gloves treatment

Very interesting remark re the insight into her and how she regards us. She has made it clear frequently that she doesn't expect to be treated like an employee in the subservient sense. I mean, in the sense I am her boss. So we do things like take her out for a birthday breakfast, buy her treats and so on. To show the friend aspect of it iykwim. So then when this happened and she said "as an employee I consider myself to be off duty in the fullest sense when I am 'off duty'" it felt like a real kick in the teeth.

It is rude.. but I also think there can be a risk with an au pair that as they are "just" near enough to encroach on their time and they never feel off duty.

If she is as lovely as you say she is with your children... I'd probably chalk it up to a personal weirdness and collect your parcel from the neighbour.

HowBad, the OP has not said she's 'warned' the AP to expect the bell or told her she's expected to answer. She's said, and I know I'm repeating, 'I didn't expect her to listen out but to open if she did happen to hear it.'

Why are you trying to impose another meaning, of your own invention, on what the OP said?

"in the course of conversation". In other words, she backed off a bit, but in doing so, made a nonsense of having mentioned it in the first place. The sense of what she was actually asking for was a bit of a dog's dinner. The AP clarified it by saying 1. sure if I'm around, 2. not if I'm in my room though and not working 3. no I don't want to have to clarify in advance which it will be when I'm not actually working. The clarity here seems to be regarded as offensive whereas the fuzziness of the OP's vague and meaninglessly backed off from request seems fine (although it would drive me nuts)

How bad - im enjoying your thinking on this. Its a good way of looking at it. These sort of working relationships in the home are tricky

I haven't read all the responses. I do think there is a big difference between expecting her to be responsible and accountable for answering the door and answering it like any other adult in the family, as long as it is reasonably convienent and she hears it.

Like others have said this may be a cultural thing if not expressing herself well. She has been unkind and not treated you as you have treated her OP. Most likely this is unintentional. So if you haven't already (apologies if you've updated and I haven't seen it!) do share how she made you feel and your expectations.

I don't think they are unreasonable but if she doesn't properly understand she might think they are.

It's not the 'clarity' of the AP's response that posters are finding offensive, I don't think; it's the lack of flexibility, amenability and common sense.

It's not particularly hard to understand the statement (I'm paraphrasing) 'Could you possibly get the door if you don't think I've heard it?' and I'd be a bit at anyone who chose to interpret that as being asked to work, or expected to get the door. I would assume that, if they were not known to be hard of thinking, they were being deliberately argumentative about it.

I would not have asked her to.listen out for the bell when she is on her time off to be honest. She is setting her boundaries out and when adults do this with us we accept it. She is entitled to down time and not having to be responsible for your stuff. I would just be near your own bell so you can handle it yourself. I don't think she is being unreasonAble even though it us not what I would do myself.

howbad I like your thinking too. For example, if you line manager says 'can you do x for me?' and you don't there are always implied implications/repercussions (of the not doing) due to the relationship dynamic.

When you are an AP and live with your 'employer' then there is a POWER IMBALANCE. To those posting about how the AP is BU - if you are too lacking in imagination to imagine what that feels like then I'm hope you never employ an AP.

HowBad, interestingly I saw this as the OP having to participate in a kind of emotional labour often (invariably) expected of women who are mothers, in that they are expected to tiptoe around others and worry about their feelings and oil the wheels of social life, taking all the responsibility for things like that, and shouldering the burden domestically and emotionally. Meanwhile others are less flexible, helpful and sensitive and think this is fine, taking advantage of the mother's emotional work whilst failing to reciprocate to the same degree. I suppose it depends on your vantage point who you think is the one doing the emotional 'work' here.

I used to find with APs that those without working mothers or who had little experience of tiny babies close up had very little understanding of how the average British mother keeps the show on the road, actually, particularly when working full-time or having had a difficult pregnancy or birth. They seemed to think it was the mother's role to shoulder the entire domestic burden, and that the fact she got any help at all, whether from the father or paid, was so luxuriant and decadent that he should have been gushing with gratitude the whole time. I had a conversation like this with an otherwise lovely French AP once:

"I don't know why you need help changing the beds, my mother had three children and managed to do it by herself"
"Was your mother working 40 hours a week with a 10 hour commute running a school music department? And teaching four hours of piano lessons every Saturday as well?"
"No, she did not have a job"
"Well that's why I have help, because I have 55 fewer hours a week than she did to achieve the same things".
"Oh yes"

I think some people honestly don't understand what's going on sometimes. Genuinely. which is supposed to be the point of them travelling to broaden their experience.

I agree, Boffin, about who in this scenario is doing the emotional work.

What if she's in her room bleaching her tash or trimming her pubes? Would you answer the door like that? If she's off duty she is entitled to stay in her room and ignore the doorbell. YABU.

Shes good point! There are myriad things she could've been doing!

fashion, this has been hammered out pretty comprehensively, but OK:

the OP said to her AP she 'didn't expect her to listen out but to open if she did happen to hear it.'

In other words, she is free not to answer the door if she's not willing or able to; but if she's off duty but close to the door/has her hands free/isn't trimming her pubes etc, and IS able to answer it, then it'd be nice if she could.

That's all she's asking.

But why is the AP supposed to be shouldering the full time emotional and physical labour of being a senior member of a family? It's not her family, and she works very part time.
Behaving as part of a family means not being a dick, it doesn't mean being as never-off-duty-and-ultimately-wrung-out as the mother.
Being a flat mate is not like being a mother. Being expected to be like a flat mate is not being a dick. Being expected to share the mother role, as an AP or flatmate, is grossly unfair.

the reason why mothers are wrung out is because they have dependents. the children aren't able to look after as much as adults do and their husbands (if they have them) don't bother most of the time.

So the mother gets an AP, not to share the burden like a proper partner (as opposed to a useless husband) but to do clearly defined small amounts of work for very little money.

If the AP and the mother form a deep emotional bond and ultimately get married, then the AP is a partner and a step parent and ultimately in 20 years time will be at the weddings of the children and they will give speeches in which they mention the love and support the AP has given them over the years. That would be very nice and heartwarming. This is an entirely different situation from providing 15 hours a week supervision while they do their homework.