P*ssed off with au pair - am I overreacting?

[Mumpbump]

Our au pair didn't come home last night and sent us a text at 23:30 saying she had missed the last train home from London - 45 minutes before the last train left! She was watching the football which finished at 22:30 so there is no real reason for her not to have made it home.

I'm irritated because I feel that we have been very accommodating and helpful to her generally and she has lied to us which is completely "disrespectful". It is not the second or third time she has lied to us, all about silly things. She is meant to be leaving at the end of the month so there is an issue about whether this is a sign of things to come, but do you think it would be unfair to ask her to go sooner in the circumstances? Or am I making a mountain out of a molehill?

She looks after our ds for the whole day on Mondays, but we have someone else lined up to take over anyway. I feel leaving ds in the care of someone who is not honest is questionable, but again wonder if I'm being overprotective...

Any comments welcome! Thanks...

NKF- but she did get home on time. - so the childcare didn;t need to be rearranged. She was late for 2 make up sessions when she was asked to work the weekends instead of doing the mornings in case she was late.

Whole thing sounds barking to me tbh.

I think you are over reacting. I also find it weird you call her pay her 'allowance'. You her employer not he parent. She is a grown adult and is she stays out away from your child but turns up on time for work the next day (even half an hour earlier) then i can not see the problem.

You also assume she lied because you assume you know what she was up to. What if she went for a meal after the game? She may have genuinely missed the last train. She may not have been anywhere near the station when she texted you. I think she was courteous enough to text you and turned up on time - i think you are over-reacting, but you obviously don't trust her so it is probably good that this arrangement is coming to an end.

I'd also ensure a contract is drawn up between you and the next au pair so she is aware of your rules as an employer.

No - she did turn up on time. She has also volunteered that she is very happy with us on previous occasions so I don't think that she has any particular issues with us and the way our household works/rules of the house.

I didn't want to make this a long-winded post, but there is a background to this.

The thing is she said she would come for 24 months and on that basis we paid for half of her airfare (£540 in total). As I mentioned, we arranged to take ds out of nursery on Mondays in part to give her something to do and some more pocket money. The weekend before the first Monday he was due to be at home (in early April), she mentioned very much in passing that her boyfriend had booked flights to go back home with her at the start of July (at which point she would have been with us for about 8 months). When I asked her if that meant she was going home then, said yes - so we had taken ds out of nursery on the assumption she was a long-term prospect and she had already decided she was only staying for a couple more months with us which I didn't think was particularly considerate of her. I was also slightly irritated that we had forked out a lot of money which we would not have done if she had said she was only coming for 8 months.

Then she lied about something in order to justify her friend staying over for a second night (we have never, ever said no once to her having friends stay over, even for the whole weekend) which I thought odd. And now she has lied again about why she "couldn't" make it home last night. I just feel that there is a history of her being less than honest with us and that is why I am so p*ssed off.

Stig - "allowance" is how it is described on all the au pair websites I have visited - that is why I use that term. And she voluntarily told me she had been out at the Walkabout pub near Temple which is half an hour by tube from Victoria and she sent her text message 45 minutes before the last train so she had plenty of time to make it to the station...

Mumpbump - with more background details i can see why you are annoyed. Is she going back for a holiday or full time? If it is permanent i would ask for a refund of the flight costs - or at least half the flight costs.

I think the reason she lied is that she knew you would have told her not to bother coming to work in the morning (and that she would have had to make up the hours another time even though it would not have been her choice to not be working in the morning which was why she kind of showed you the 'up your's' sign and arrived 1/2 hour early). I'm guessing that on the normal days she works she has not been late?
I think if my boss said to me 'dont come in tomorrow morning as you are out tonight' I would have thought 'nice one!' it would never cross my mind that I would have to make up the hours that my boss told me to have off!

NKF - we don't usually bother too much about how many hours she actually does 'cos we're not that fussed provided she takes ds to nursery and picks him up okay. That is the primary reason we have an au pair because it is difficult for us to get back from work to pick him up from nursery on time so we've always turned a blind eye to the fact she works nowhere near her contratual hours. We also helped her get another part-time job helping someone out with their children.

sorry MB! just read your post on the background and can see why you're fuming!
I also think that if she is not coming back to deduct the money from her allowance (I doubt she would offer to refund half...)

Stig - she is going back permanently.

Soak - can you not see that we might not want the stress of not knowing whether or not she is going to be back in time first thing in the morning? Do you think that is unreasonable to want to limit the stress at the start of your day if you both commute for 1.25 hours each way and work long days - not that I'm doing much work today!!!

MB - I would ask her to contribute towards the plane tickets, especially since it was mainly her decision to leave and when to leave. In fact this alone would have made me very annoyed, even though I can see how at life circumstances can change. She's probably no different to how she always was, but you feel "used" now and less likely to let anything go unnoticed.

this thread sums up for me the problems with au pairs - you talk about "allowance" rather than "pay" because it's a sort of family arrangement where she helps out in exchange for living with you and pocket money. But you then talk about her "contractual hours" which imply something rather more formal. I don't mean this to be a criticism of Mumpbump - she doesn't seem to have behaved unreasonably given the house rules - but more an illustration of the issues that arise where you don't have clear and identical understanding of the deal. They almost all seem to end with both sides feeling taken advantage of.

Dh wanted to deduct more from her allowance, but I said we had an agreement and that just because she hadn't behaved in the way we would have wanted her to didn't mean that we should break our agreement. I can see why people think I'm over-reacting if you take last night in isolation, but I guess for us it is like the straw that breaks the camel's back type thing.

Haven't read all the posts (so am prepared to be shot down in flames!)but it seems to me that there are a lot of mis-understandings here. If this girl is genuinely an au-pair, then she is not an "employee" and talk of giving her written warnings, following disciplinary proceedings etc are not relevant. Calling the money she receives an "allowance" is completely correct as au-pairs are not employees and the money they receive is normally below the threshold for paying tax and NI.

I have only employed nannies, and live-out ones at that, but if I had a live-in nanny of 27 years old, I would not expect her necessarily to inform me that she was going to be out all night EXCEPT that as she would be living in my house, if she was not coming back, I would need to know to set the alarm. Similarly, if I thought she was going to be out all night and she suddenly turned up at 3 a.m., she could probably be wrestled to the ground by dh. However, if I had an au-pair I WOULD expect her to tell me if she was going to be out all night because I see an au-pair as someone younger, less experienced and who is in my home to provide an extra pair of hands for a small amount of money and the chance to learn English and be part of our family. I wouldn't employ a 27 year old because I think it would lead to just the kind of difficulties described here and while I would feel fine about telling a 19-year old whom I was paying £60 a week that I needed her to be home on weeknights, I would find it a lot more awkward to say that to someone older, presumably more experienced and more worldly-wise.

I talk about hours because we got a friend to translate into her language exactly what we expected in terms of hours and duties and sent it to her in writing before we accepted her as our au pair. We never signed any formal contract, but I don't think there was much scope for misunderstanding! I am very aware of the potential for misunderstandings because I deal with foreigners all the time in my line of work!

But I agree with what you say about the inherent difficulties of having a non-English speaking person with a different culture and therefore different expectations. Band dh and I have said that if we do it again we will go through an agency so that if it doesn't work out and the au pair leaves before the agreed period, they can deal with the stress of finding a replacement at no cost.

MB I can totally see your point but I can also see au pairs veiw that the reason she lied is she KNEW you would say not to bother coming in the morning when she has never been given the chance to show you that she can stop out and still arrive for work in the morning.
she has now shown you that she is capable of doing both.

I would just assume next time she stops out that she will arrive on time in the morning - if she doesn't, fair enough rip her head off and dock her wage.
just make it clear to her next time that if she does stop out all night that you expect her on time the following morning for work.

Mumbimp, be aware that if you do use an agency, the period during which they are contracted to find you a new aupair at no cost is usually very short (like maybe 4 weeks!)

Oh - and obviously I meant to call you mumpbump, rather than my previous mis-spelling!

Message withdrawn

She's not really an au pair in the traditional sense. Firstly, they never come for 24 months. More like six. Basically, what you have is a foreign national for whom the easiest way into the country is via domestic work.

Secondly, as you've turned a blind eye
to lateness, cancellation etc, she's probably got the idea that you are pretty flexible.

A text is the coward's way of delivering news that is likely to be unpopular.

I think the problem here is that you are unsure on whether you want an au pair or a nanny. I would be dubious of getting an au pair who was 27 as far as I am concerned an au pair is someone on a gap yer from school generally foreign and coming to the UK to study English and earn pocket money/allowance in return for a pre-agreed amount of work within the family houshold whether that it cleaning or childcare.

She may be unsure of what you expect of her and if you have no contract unfortunalty you are on a hiding to nothing as the rules of the household and hours and your expectations of what are expected of her are not clearly laid out. I personally have been a nanny for 13 yrs and have always sat down with employers and agreed terms and conditions of work and household rules before even agreeing to work for them.

sadly there are many girls out there who will push the boundaries and it is difficult to come back to a previous verbal agreement especially if that agreement sounds like it has been changed several times to suit differing arrangements.

Perhaps this is the time for her to move on but I would make sure that you know she has somewhere to go, although she is 27 with a boyfriend and was leaving anyway she may still view your house as her home.

Good luck with whatever you decide and I hope that your next childcare arrangement works out better.

I am heading home soon so thanks to everyone who took the time and trouble to post. It has certainly made me reconsider why I feel the way I do although it hasn't necessarily changed what I feel!!

I think I'll still be asking her if she would like to leave earlier because, to be honest, I rather suspect that she just wants to have some time having fun in England before she goes home - and who wouldn't? (And don't worry, I'll be nice about it if she doesn't take the out voluntarily!) For her, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity and she's very into clubbing (girl after my own heart!). I think the fact that a lot of top DJ's are British was a big motivation for her to come here and she was desperately hoping to get tickets for Glastonbury, but couldn't so I think the incentive to stay has lessened considerably. Why our gorgeous ds isn't incentive enough for her to stay, I just don't know...

if she turned up on time, what does it matter where she spent the night? agree with Aloha, you are setting up a situation where she will lie.
It might be a good idea to pay the fare home next time, then you can decide. APs v rarely stay 24 months ime

In loco parentis of a 27 year old - har!

mumpbump, hope you don't feel too hounded by this thread. I can read from your posts that your aupair's heart is not in her duties - esp the stretching of her intentions regarding the length of her stay. Her lying is just a symptom of the problem. She does not sound like she takes your family seriously. The sooner you see the back of her, the better.