Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes

I’m very disappointed, my new nanny completely flaked on me. I really liked her and so did the babies. I couldn’t sleep all night thinking about all her fantastical stories she told me when she couldn’t come to work. But how good she was when she worked and how we got a long so well. I turned her onto a job for another twin mom working Tuesdays and Thursdays. When she called in on Monday after “the death of her aunt” I texted Tuesday to make sure she was OK and was coming to work today. Fiona has her hearing appointment and I need an extra set of hands. She had sent me a text on Monday saying she would definitely be here Wednesday and Friday, but I just wanted to confirm. She finally texted me back saying that she got a bunch of bad news and needed to go home for the service. She said I should find someone else. I feel bad for her, I believe everything she has told me, Alan hasn’t believed one word. I called the other mom I recommended H to, to give her a heads up, “H’s apparently having a hard time, and I feel bad I recommended her to you. She just sent me a text saying she had to go home for a while. You might want to look for someone else too.” To my surprise H worked for D Tuesday and didn’t mention anything about her aunt. She was also planning on working for D today, and every other day Monday through Friday. She told D I was being flaky and cut her hours. She asked D if she was friends with me and if we “talked” before going down that path. There’s so many strange parts to all of this, but my biggest question is, H if you read this, “Why not just tell me you didn’t want to work for us? Why not be honest? Why did you act like you liked this job watching jack and Fiona? It seemed like we really got along well, why couldn’t you talk to me?”  The most bizarre part is she took $15 an hour from D when I was paying her $20 because of her experience. When I got out of bed this morning I had another thought. Today we were supposed to go to Early Start, H didn’t like it there when we went last week. Maybe that was part of it. Alan thinks the job was simply too hard for her. It is a lot of work taking care of Jack and Fiona. I’m going to have a hard time finding anyone as good as Ramona.

I definitely learned from this experience, my gut instinct about people is not as reliable as I’ve always thought. I’m going to have to be a lot more careful the next time I hire a nanny. It makes me feel like not hiring a nanny, now I don’t trust anything they say. I automatically assume people are committed and loyal. That when people take a job they want a job or at least need to make money. I worked for Nordstrom’s for seven years and never called in sick once. But I guess that was probably dumb and being overly loyal to a company that wasn’t loyal to me. I’m just that type of person, I’m a diehard committer. I have a big problem with flakiness but a bigger problem with lies. I am honest to a fault, seriously. I can’t lie very good. I assume others are like me. It feels daunting to have to search for a new nanny. I’m bummed.