fired my aupair!

[CookieDoughKid]

Twice my aupair didn't clean son's toilet seat as part of her bathroom cleaning duties even though I specifically called this out in my email to her. I got the potty out and asked whether she had cleaned it. She had the gall to lie in front of my face. I'm not that sorry that I blew my top at her and asked whether she needed a lesson in cleaning. She's 27 by the way and is Spanish. A reluctant aupair who is only here in the UK because she has not been able to find work in Spain.

After her blatant lying to me I decided to study her CV more closely. And asked her about the three degrees gained at University. She was unable to explain what degree classification received (said she couldn't remember?) And nor could she explain the overlap in years (MSc degree gained at the same time as her second (!!) BSc).

I've just booked her flight home in 5 days.

Would you have fired the aupair too? Incompetence is one thing but lying I feel is a trait not worth employing.

Blue shoes what astonished me is that she is firing the au pair over such a trivial issue.

I am very good to my au pair, and in return she is very good to us. Like any relationship it goes both ways.

I don't expect cleaning because she is here to look after my daughter, which is far more important than cleaning. As it happens she does help with cleaning, but it is never asked of her.

splash, does your aupair lie to you?

You keep going on about not making your aupair do cleaning but you miss the point that cleaning is and always has been a part of OP's aupair's duties. It is a normal part of an aupair's job spec and I have been hiring aupairs for almost 10 years.

If you take up a job knowing it involves something, then refuse to do it and lie to your employer that you have done it, isn't that a sackable offence? It is hardly trivial. I still don't see anything astonishing about the OP's actions.

Firing the au pair because in the manner the op has is shocking. It sounds like op just threw a strop, rather than talking to the au pair about what is expected and agreeing a plan of action.

If op was really that unhappy she should have given the au pair sufficient notice to find a new job.

splash, I wonder whether you have read this thread.

About allowing aupair to find another job, this is what the OP wrote:

"I was supportive of her finding employment in the UK but she was surprisingly very taken aback when I told her a uk employer may ask for verification of her qualifications. She said in Spain it was very unusual because they have no grading system for any qualifications studied at 16 onwards. Is that really the case for Spain?!! How does one know if you'd be any good to qualify for doctor or dental training?!!

So that's basically why I fired her - based on her attitude and the lying and I've learnt some lessons here for sure!!"

Yes blue I have read it all. Nowhere has the op said that she gave her pay in lieu of notice or enough notice to find another job.

What you have just quoted makes no difference. The op assumed the au pair would not be able to get another job.

I don't believe this thread tbh, for the following reasons.

1. No-one hires an aupair without checking academic and personal references. Particularly not for a child young enough not to be using the toilet without a booster. And very particularly no-one who claims to have had three previous aupairs

1. No-one fires an aupair for not cleaning the booster

But hey, let's just imagine someone ditsy and imperious - two qualities that don't usually sit together IME - and picture her with an au-pair.

Nope. I didn't check academic references. I interviewed her twice and got a good reference from a mother who she used to babysit their 3yo baby. She had never been an aupair before but did babysitting and rightly or wrongly I was impressed by her 3degrees.

My previous aupairs who have been amazing and set a very high bar had excellent verbal and written references which I followed up as legit so didn't bother with their qualification verifications either .

Although I fired the aupair over lying to me several times over. I gave her a 3 week formal notice period but she decided to quit and leave within 3 days. Nothing I can or should do about that I think but I have offered to pay for her flight home because I feel guilty for sacking her and she has no job to go home too.

As far as I am aware many continental degrees are awarded without a class like in the UK. Totally different system. Also, it is very well possible to study a second BSc and MSc at the same time. Not everybody will when accused of lying out of the blue and possibly falsely accused remember secondary school subjects and grades.

Not cleaning the loo seat properly is unlikely to be a sackable offence.

OP you should rub your hands that she is Spanish and not British because she could easily sue you for being unfairly treated and intimidated. Based on your post I would expect you would lose such a case.

love she still could, but being Spanish she probably doesn't know it.

As for knowing whether you'd make a doctor or not in Spain there are just exams - you pass you're in, you fail you're out. So if you passed it's accepted you're good enough. There may well be no ranking or classifucation for her degrees, bit she should have certificates.

Well, if after x3 repeated warnings about lying, put on a performance plan and then finally providing 3 weeks notice period with pay and no perks removed (over and above my written contract with her) is being unfairly treated and intimidated for deliberately avoiding doing a job that's written into her job description - then I don't know what is.

Thanks on the continental degrees explanation. I've acknowledged it before on this thread and give my thanks for the explanation.

Hi OP, lots of people don't bother to read the posts properly and do the knee-jerk thing of giving aupair employers a hard time. Just treat it as water off a duck's back on these threads.

If your aupair tried to sue you (and she is entitled to the same protection under UK laws), it would be interesting to see how far she gets. If anything, aupair employers are at the mercy of their aupairs because the contract tends to only flow one way in practice - to the advantage of the aupair.

It is all too easy for aupairs to leave their families in the lurch - yours being a case on point. Do aupair families try to sue? . It is not in the interests of aupair families to mistreat their aupairs because guess what ... aupair simply does a runner.

This must be a joke?

had a nice AP once who's account of herself and her date of birth did not match the documents I got. She eventually told me that in her part of the world, they get to buy the reference letters, police checks, medical checks, copy certificates and ID. The agencies make them up and set up the pictures with children for the dossier, alter the cvs, write the dear family letters for them and advice them to state that they are non-smokers. Apparently even when they protest, the agencies may threaten to drop them from their books or fill them with fear that they are likely to end up with really bad families.

Ah - yes, thanks blueshoes. I'm sometimes guilty of not reviewing all the threads on Mumsnet so I understand how that can be done!!

On the whole, I've had very good experiences of having an aupair. My one previous one to this (she was from Italy), was an absolute star. She was just 22 but had a very positive attitude. She arrived in the UK to live with me. She worked hard for me (took out the rubbish unprompted! Often made the kids their breakfast on the Sunday even though it wasn't her working hours) and we grew to really love her.

I also worked hard for her in return (I didn't have to but I really wanted to) - to help improve her English and in her English exam prep. We used to spend Sunday morning reading the Sunday papers and I'd help her with difficult passages from the papers.

She passed her A-level English Languages exam with flying colours and got her first rung on the ladder as an assistant at the United Nations office in her country. Although qualifications wise, my Spanish aupair far exceeded her, I think it was not a coincidence that my Spanish one found it difficult to get a job in the commercial world (if based on her attitude and willingness was anything to go by!).

Trust and honesty is key obviously, but in my opinion - in life, the more you put in, the more you get out! Everything else pales into comparison!!

fine Wow- thanks for pointing that out!!

You fired someone over her not cleaning a potty twice. God forbid the poor woman had done something serious! Is it not possible on these two occasions your child required her attention and then she was distracted from this simplest of tasks and forgot to return to it.? Obviously the lying in the cv if she has is completely wrong, but then again isn't firing someone over a uncleaned potty?

For just not doing a couple of tasks I would have probably talked through expectations with her again rather than firing her. However, the dishonesty would be a bigger issue for me.

Nowadays its often possible to search on the internet for plenty of information to check facts and a quick search on Spanish degrees indicates there do seem to be different grades. It would be unlikely for an au pair not to know how she performed in her exams so I think you have probably sussed her out there!

I'm recruiting for an au pair at the moment and have been disappointed at the number of dishonest applications - once you start checking/verifying what they say about themselves by various means it is hard to find an honest applicant! I haven't always had this problem so I may just be unlucky this time or perhaps the number of applicants trying their luck with false information/false references is increasing.

Interesting thread! CookieDough I think you have been entirely reasonable throughout this thread.

I haven't had an au pair, but I was an au pair - it was a long time ago now (20 years). At the time, I was 19, never au paired before (had one a lot of babysitting). I was looking after a 4 month old baby (who was luckily a really easy, lovely baby), doing full cleaning of the house once a week (including toilets), and doing some child care some evenings. Can you imagine the uproar on here I was a proposing to let an au-pair do that now? I don't understand why people are so incredibly precious about au-pairs. With regards to cleaning, it is almost as if it is automatically assumed that that is done by a cleaner and therefore beneath an au-pair.

CookieDough I can totally understand your concern about the lying. It is about personal integrity, if someone lies about one thing, do they lie about other things too?

I should have said, one day a week I had the baby by myself for 10 hours. I must confess, that was hard work not least because I had no friends nearby. But for the rest, it was absolutely fine. I knew what I was doing in advance, I agreed, and off I went. And I did it. I didn't enjoy the cleaning, but hey.