My nanny is taking the p**s and dont anyone try and tell me otherwise.......

[3rdcornet]

Ive have emplyed 5 au pairs and 5 nannies. All of them bar 1 have taken the piss out of me to varying degrees.

The current so to be not one is a nanny/HK to my 2 teenagers. `fully ofsted registered and paid £26k a year live in ( in Manchester ).

I have discovered she is taking some ( not all ) of our laundry to the local ironing service and paying for it out of the kitty. Treating her self to lunch and coffee out of the kitty most days ( usually in Starbucks ) and shopping exclusively for her food for her self contained accomodation on the family credit card ( which is for work use only ) in Marks and Spencesr when she shops for the children in Morrisons and won't eat what they are eating.

On top of that she is she says too busy to do cleaning yet most days is somewhere other than my house in our car. I know this because we have randomdly popped home during the day and she is out in our car not hers and I can see where she has been using the credit card......35 miles in the opposite direction to the one school run she needs to do a day.

She also sneaks things for her own home through amazon on our account too. Ive found the delivery notes in the bin !!!

Dear God I feel a fool. I thought I could trust this one. The others have mainly been worse. The one before faked a family death to get a months compassionate leave and snuck off to America on holiday. She never came back !!

Oh well. You live and learn. I will never employ a nanny again Thank goodness and good luck and my commiserations to all of you who unfortunately still have no choice.

Im here for advice !!!!!!!Coz I got it so right !

Recipe: take 2 parts cynicism, 1 part anonymity, and a good pinch of envy. Baste well over wealthy poster and stew until no trace of the poster remains. Offer claims of just desserts with a straight face.

This thread is fantastic!

'Very upsetting for all concerned and not appropiate to say on here'

I'm def leaning towards drug mule now!

'I absolutely do not believe a high earning, apparently savvy couple would be spending 26k plus extras on what is basically wraparound care for teenagers. If anyone were to do so frankly they deserve to be robbed.'

There are plenty of people with more money than sense. After all people do spend their hard earned cash on eyelashes for their car and shoes for dogs. A nanny, in comparison, is a sensible buy! They don't deserve to be robbed though.

The nanny worked 5 years for her, so maybe she started on a lower salary and just had a payrise of 5% every year?

I am absolutely amazed by most of the replies OP got here. Disbelief in high earnings and justification of the nanny? I fully believe that the nanny has got too comfortable, and it is the best time to reinforce the rules.

I have nanny myself, and when I employed her, I gave her my 100% trust in advance because she was to take care of my children and run the house as her own. We also had some problems later (you could say that she started taking a piss after a while), but I reinforced the rules and hopefully it will work. OP, I sympathize you.

I hope you can resolve it with your nanny. Take it as business conversation and don?t make it personal. ?The kitty is for this, this and this etc.? ?The car can be used for this and this? ?I hope we understood each other, thank you?. Let us know how did it go.

Poor you! A nanny who had worked for us for quite a while and so got 'comfortable' started taking advantage but on a smaller scale to yours as she didn't have a credit card, so it was just our kitty money that was disappearing in alarming amounts with no explanation. Therefore I don't think this is uncommon/unique. You need to clamp down on it straight away, obviously! And you've already said you are going to meet with her, quite right! I would make it clear what expenditure is and isnt' allowed on the credit card and/or from the kitty (and confirm this to her in writing afterwards),also ask for an expenses log to be kept in future. Give her an expenses book and ask her to track all expenses and give an explanation, also ask her to say whether the expense was made from kitty or credit card to make your monitoring easier, and of course ask for receipts. I would also ask her to pay back for any items that are clearly outside of what she could plausibly expect to be included in her salary - so she should pay back for DVDs and other personal items for example. As regards food purchases, I think this is a grey area as you have said she is entitled to breakfast lunch and dinner but don't seem to have specified any rules on this. I would therefore now make it clear that this is to be taken from servings of the family meals (if that's the case) and/or food provided in the fridge/kitchen cupboards and not to be purchased using the kitty or credit card without express prior permission given (or something similar). If she has only started doing this recently and not always purchased food using the credit card then I don't think she can argue that she is contractually entitled to buy her own food since it has been customary for her to do this. Nip it in the bud before she can claim this!

I assume that she set up her own Amazon account using the credit card you provided which is why you didn't get emails confirming the purchases and their details. Therefore, if she disagrees she should have to pay back purchases from Amazon I would ask her to provide the receipts for the items she purchased and to explain how they were relevant to her job in writing. The more you document in writing the easier it is to build a case against her if you need to dismiss her. Also, when it comes to writing a reference you will have plenty of evidence to back up any comment you wish to make about your disagreement regarding her expenses!

The payment for hoover bags for a hoover you don't own sounds a bit odd to me. If she is living with you why would she do this? Is it possible that the receipt just detailed the wrong hoover bags but in fact they were hoover bags bought for your hoover? I would definitely talk to her about this but keep an open mind until you hear her answer.

I'm not too hot on the employment procedure but I would have thought that unless you are satisfied with her answers after meeting with her, this warrants at least a verbal warning. Clearly theft if proven would be gross misconduct and grounds for dismissal but I think you already know she is going to argue that she thought she was allowed to use the credit card for these purchases.

As regards using the car for work use only, I suggest that to monitor this you also ask her to log her journey in the car in a 'mileage log book' or something similar. And, of course record the mileage on the car yourself regularly so you can track what is going on.

And on using your kitty money to pay for someone else to do the ironing, that's outrageous. But again you have to prove it - if you ask her for receipts she will probably say she doesn't have them any more so your best bet is a witness statement from the laundry shop if they are willing to do this.
As long as you can get evidence she used the kitty this way I would ask her to repay it as she effectively outsourced her job responsibilities. Does your contract include a statement to the effect that she must not delegate any of her responsibilities to someone else? Is so she has breached it.

The simple fact that you are monitoring her more closely may stop the abuse, especially since this only seems to have started in the past 3 months.
However, it does sound to me as though she may have some money problems or something else going on in her life as her behaviour has changed so perhaps a conversation with her will help you find out about this.

All I did was point out that it was the OP's first post. What's delete worthy about that??

All sounds like a load of horse manure to me anyway..

Riveting. OP, you are clearly a soft touch - get a grip. If you don't want to lose her, issue a formal verbal warning, get her to pay you back for all Amazon purchases that were hers, stop all Starbucks, laundry and other nonsense and stop making her feel like trousering all your dosh is like taking candy from a baby. She is 'aving a right larf!

Also, she's grossly overpaid for the job.

Chipping loves easteregg, I thought it had to be something bad deleted on mums net that's a first for me.i got mine deleted too. It's pathetic . You are right it was her first post very strange.

Can't believe I missed this thread! Very entertaining read

It's also her "friend's" first post.

Annh funny that thought it might be.

One does wonder, doesn't one, what on earth could have happened that would be inappropriate to post on here? Perhaphs the Op forgetting she does indeed have a hoover that takes those bags or could it be that a child needed delivering to a sports match 35 miles away Oh, the inappropriateness of it all

Group hugs ??? I wonder if they thought they were on the other site??

So many au pairs and nannies why did she not notice the amazon things on her statement. Funny she knew the bloke in the dry cleaners when er nanny does all that.

I know this is over 12 months old but I thought you maybe interested in an update.

Nanny has been charged with 10 counts of fraud by abuse of position after a 15 month long police investigation.

It turns out she was stealing from the children she cared for as well as the parents............

Blimey.

I loved this thread .

Crumbs! Did the OP ever get another nanny?

I remember this thread and how you got a hard time OP, thanks for the update.

Blimey that is a very sad state of affairs. Must be horrible knowing someone you trusted so well has stolen from you.

Skiing are you OP?

Wow!

skiingnomore can I ask how you know this? Are you the OP who can no longer afford to skiing because the nanny has taken all your money?!

Hope the OP and her family are ok