I fired my housekeeper/nanny

[QueenofWhisperz]

I have a child with SEN who is 10 and another child who is 5. My husband and I work ridiculously long hours and I entertain work clients on Friday nights.

We have had this housekeeper for the last 8 years, (ever since it was apparent that I would need help).

I love her deeply, she is like family. However, she did things that really upset me.

1. Took time off without notice, causing me to lose work.
2. Never completed her tasks, ever.
3. Tried to ingratiate her religious beliefs into my children.
4. Made me feel like no one else would work for me, or care for my children better than she would.

Today, I came home from a rough day at work, and I was doing homework with the kids before I took some clients outand this upcoming deal is quite important because it will cover some additional therapy my older child needs-and she informed me that she wasn't working her normal hours this evening.

We had agreed a work schedule in her contract; she always avoids working on a Friday night if she can help it. Anyway, as I was getting upset, I stopped myself and told her that today was her last day. (She was on warning for doing this before).

My husband has come in to tell me that I am awful. That after 10 years, I should have let her come back another day and had a nice farewell.

Professionally, cancelling this evening is devastating to me; not to mention the therapy I was going to be able to access for my son...which I will not. My boss and co-workers are having a field day with my failure for this evening and I feel like I have potentially lost everything. I am quite nervous about Monday, going back to work--but worse yet, laundry and lunches.

I didn't raise my voice, I just said that I needed her to work the schedule she agreed to, and that I will find someone else for Monday. I didn't want a heated conversation, I don't do the 'raised' voice thing.

Am I awful? Have I been terrible? I don't know how to do laundry, but I can learn. I might get fired for cancelling my evening dinner meeting.

Not sure why you are getting a hard time. If your housekeeper / nanny is regularly taking unauthorised absence at short notice and is on her fourth warning then seems reasonable to me - although difficult for all concerned given the long relationship. If it were me (and I loved her like family) I would probably have tried to establish fairly early on why this was going on rather than just issue warnings. She is not behaving well but pragmatically speaking I might have tried to see if there was a solution such as fewer hours. Unless your husband was willing to step in every time she took time off at short notice than I don’t think he is being very reasonable.

Not sure why people have their noses out of joint over a nanny / housekeeper. It’s not unusual where I am (in London) and generally for older children where a full time pure nanny is not needed.

I'm still wondering what her working hours are, and why she said she couldn't work.

Because if her hours are reasonable, and she let you down to go to a party then I'm on your side.

But if she'd been working since 8am and had just had a call to say that her child was ill, or something equally important, then I'm on her side.

If you haven't read The Nanny Diaries, written by two former nannies, I would recommend it, it's an eye opener about the shocking expectations of some employers.

I don't know where the OP is based, but the whole set-up does sound somewhat.... colonial, shall we say.

The employee does sound to have been working at least two people's hours. Just because an employee lives in your home, doesn't mean that they don't get to have a life themselves outside of working hours - and neither should they be expected to do long regular hours in the day and then also be on-call throughout the evening as well.

I agree we need to know the extent of this employee's contracted hours and how much normal time off she gets. do you both speak the same first language or are there communication difficulties and cultural differences at play here?

'I love her deeply, she is like family'. Ok. Lucky family.

You said your husband came in and said you were being awful.

But he can't have the kids himself as he is on his way back from overseas??

So does your nanny/housekeeper work 7 days a week with no time off, or do you not have lunch and do laundry at the weekend? You have this high flying job but not enough common sense to Google how to do laundry (which has to be one of the simplest activities ever). I call bullshit on the whole post.

I also assumed housekeeper works set hours (e.g. monday to friday) and has been taking fridays off with no notice.

Presumably the nanny works during the week when she does the laundry... and is contracted to babysit one or two evenings per week. Not that hard to understand.

If the hours are silly and the OP has been exploitative then this outcome is not too surprising although clearly the nanny could also have asked for reduced hours or given adequate notice of intended holiday rather than just take time off frequently for no reason at short notice.

If my nanny constantly took time off for no reason at short notice I would fire her too. I would try to find out what was going on first though and fix it.

Maybe she’s poorly? Thus struggling with the hours and taking time off.

lately she has been taking a day off every week for the last few weeks

I read this to mean that she has been taking one of her working days off with little or no notice, so that if she is due to work Monday to Friday she takes Wednesday off and only tells the OP on the Tuesday.

This can't be real everyone knows how to do laundry maybe except for the queen .

"She had taken an unexpected leave for 2 weeks in September and lately has been taking a day off every week for the last few weeks too."

Do you know why she needed to do this?

If this is real - you've really fucked your kids over. Yes, she's an employee but she's also the kids' third parent. When you work all the hours and contract out large parts of your kids' lives to someone else you enter into an arrangement that is far beyond employee/employer.
You have unceremoniously ripped away your children's main carer. How do you think they will cope with that?

Ok, firstly neither you nor her sound suited by this arrangement any more so I think fine to let her go. Sacking her with immediate effect and not allowing her to say goodbye to the children is a bit harsh though. Can you contact her and arrange for you all to have lunch or something and say goodbye? For the children's sake as they have known her all their lives.
Before you hire somebody else I think you may need to sit down with your dh and discuss frankly whether the hours and amount of duties are reasonable and whether you are paying enough for what you want.
I say this because from your comments she sounds like an unhappy and demotivated employee which is a shame after ten years.

"I am quite nervous about Monday - going back to work, but worse yet laundry and lunches"

Uh huh.

People being shocked at her wanting to take off one day per week.. It's in her contract to work those days! If you agree to a contract you can't just blow it off whenever you please. I think you were right to fire her although she should have gotten to say goodbye.

YANBU OP.

She has a contract, she’s broken it multiple times, she’s had more than fair warning if she’s had four. Her refusal to work at the last minute massively impacts your working life too. It has ripple effects.

Cant quite understand why you’re getting such a hard time. Perhaps because it’s a Nanny. If you’d said childminder the responses would have likely been different.

I think it's wrong to take a contracted day off at short notice too.

But I wonder why the nanny felt entitled to do it after ten years, and what these 'ridiculously long' hours look like for the nanny.

The only nanny I know, is fed up of making plans she ends up cancelling when the parents work overtime, and of them getting arsey when she can't babysit at short notice. A contract works both ways. Perhaps this nanny took time off she felt she was owed in lieu. I don't know, would be interesting to hear the other side. But either way it sounds like it was time to part company.

You haven't said what her hours are.

It's not reasonable to take time off at short notice, but how unreasonable it is may depend on how many hours she works and whether she has appropriate breaks and holidays.

As an employer you have obligations, and your employee has rights; it's not a one way street. It's not completely clear from the way that you post that you are aware of this.

How can you DH have simultaneously come in and be travelling?

So many questions. What kind of hours did she work? It sounds like a very heavy schedule, full days Monday to Friday plus Friday night each week?

Also, this was intriguing:

"My boss and co-workers are having a field day with my failure for this evening and I feel like I have potentially lost everything"

... what kind of job do you do, and what kind of team spirit prevails when your boss and co-workers are going to seemingly delight in and benefit from this "failure" of yours?

This post is totally believable. I’ll hazard a guess that the OP is in England and that the lady is a phillipina housekeeper / nanny. She most likely does all the household chores and keeps an eye on the kids (dinner / bath / tidying bedrooms / laundry) but not homework / clubs.

This is an entirely common arrangement in many part of London with 2 working parents and even in wealthy SAHM’s.

Most likely this lady lives in works 5 days a week including a Friday night with Sunday and Monday off. Salary will be about £350 to £500 per week net assuming that the OP pays her taxes.

Whilst OP maybe shouldn’t have sacked her like that she has made it clear she will pay her what she is due.

BTW I have never had a nanny housekeeper I’m the one who is folding washing at midnight after a full day at work and pay someone completely over the odds to pick my child up from school and make dinner, then use a different babysitter if I need to go out and a separate cleaner but I know many many people with OP’s arrangement

My post which got deleted had some good advice about laundry and lunches.

YANBU to sack your nanny/housekeeper. YABU to do it suddenly without first checking how to do laundry or employing more help.

There have been some pretty innocuous comments deleted from the thread. Looks like op is still very present and doesn't feel like answering questions such as the hours worked and Nationality of her nanny.