Please can I hear some views on this CM

[meanspiritednamechange]

Name changed in case I am just being a total bitch (might be, I am stressed to buggery with a million things apart from this)

My CM, who is self employed and so I suppose can do as she likes, has just announced that for perfectly legimate family reasons (funerals expensive flights etc) she will be off work for 4 weeks from 15 Dec. This is such short notice! It leaves me and DP really stuffed for various reasons.

I feel like I am always chasing her about this, that and the other. I knew she wanted to go away over xmas and started asking her about dates on 10 November. Only because I chased again today have I found this out.

Work is just through the roof and I have no idea what to do. I honestly don't think she grasps that some people don't have a choice about how much work they have and when they can do it.

I now have to cancel other commitments too - basically my one fun thing this xmas was a concert I now can't do. ok that is just whining but my gay childless choir master has no sympathy with child stuff and I am definitely on my 3rd strike now and I doubt I will be asked to sing in anything ever again. It's a good choir and the only music I have left.

Over the year since Jan 14 she will have taken 7 or 8 weeks holiday. Not counting the odd time something comes up and she pulls DP out of work so she can attend to something else. I don't have 7 weeks holiday so no wonder I am feeling incredibly stretched trying to cover all this.

she asks for 4 weeks paid and the rest is not paid but still leaves us stuffed.

who is being unreasonable?

WWYD?

OP - if you have school aged DCs, don't want to use the after school club and can't afford a nanny, you don't have many choices except for a CM!

Ask around, you'd be surprised who know someone who knows someone who's looking for a nanny share!

This is appalling.

Surely she's in breach of contract? You state four weeks notice. She has not given you this even from the start of the thread on 28 Nov. Now she is going to tell you tonight that she is going in ten days?!

I really think that she is taking you for an utter ride.

When someone behaves as unreasonably as this, the good thing is that you can be utterly straight with them and still sound reasonable and even friendly.

'Look X, there is no easy way to say this but there is a reason that our contract states four weeks' notice for time off like this. We cannot take more time off work to cover you. We cannot absorb the cost of alternative childcare in this situation either. Which is why we have a contract covering these issues. You're telling us now that you will simply go in ten days' time and we will be left utterly stuffed. I am really sorry but we simply don't have a choice - either you find alternative and appropriate childcare for us to cover the time away that you've not given reasonable notice for, which you will be liable for paying, or we simply terminate employment immediately for breach of contract, which will leave us financially able to cover emergency childcare in the very short term at least.'

Something like castle milk said, but without the terminating employment bit, as the cm isn't employed by the parent.

There are emergency childminders on emergencychildcare.co.uk as well as nannies. I am on there. I don't cost a fortune! Worth a look, I would have thought.