A mother of three young children has revealed the “unacceptable” act that saw her sack her family’s 21-year-old babysitter.
Posting on Reddit’s “Am I the A–hole” forum, the woman explained how she recently hired a co-worker’s younger stepsister to babysit her children aged five, eight, and 10 several times this month.
“She’s a student doing a side hustle and lives with her parents,” she wrote, calling her “Gabby”.
“I paid her more than the normal market rate for three kids because she agreed to do it on quite short notice.”
The mom claimed that one day when the young woman was looking after the children from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., she got a motion detection alert on her doorbell camera at around 1:30 pm “and I saw an unfamiliar woman coming into the house”.
“I was super confused and a bit alarmed at first,” she wrote.
“She was in the house for maybe 15 minutes, then left and sat in her car. I confronted Gabby about it and she said that the woman was her mom and that she was giving her a ride home.
“I told Gabby there was no reason for her mom to come into the house and that she can’t let other people inside unless it’s an emergency. She could’ve at least texted or called one of us.
“Gabby told me it wasn’t a big deal and that it was just her mom and didn’t seem to understand the problem at all and wasn’t apologetic.
“I talked to my husband and we agreed that this was unacceptable and fired Gabby and found another babysitter.
“My coworker and Gabby are now p***ed at me and my coworker said that their stepsister didn’t deserve to get fired and they accused us of having a superiority complex.”
The post sparked heated debate, with nearly 1,800 comments arguing both sides.
One user agreed the mother was “not the a**hole”.
“You don’t know her mom,” they wrote.
“You hired Gabby to do a job as an adult. If she worked at Pizza Hut, mommy would not be allowed behind the counter in the employees-only area. This is the equivalent of what she did bringing her mother into your home (and you’re right, mom had no reason to go inside your home). If she were a teenager, MAYBE I might feel differently, but Gabby is a grown woman.”
Another user calling themselves a “professional nanny” agreed.
“I’ve had instances where my mom and or boyfriend was my ride from work and never did either of them come to the door,” they wrote.
“Once I had my mom drop me off lunch and I asked permission before and literally all she did was meet me at the door with lunch. [Not the a**hole] but in the future, you should lay out very clear guidelines of what you expect/what’s an absolute no!”
A third added there was “absolutely no need for this random stranger to go inside your house”.
“I do not care if it’s the babysitter’s mother, she can call, text, knock on the door and talk there and NOT GO INSIDE,” they said.
“It’s very sketchy that this woman felt the need to go inside a stranger’s home so easily the way she did. She or the sitter didn’t ask or bring up the visit to you beforehand.”
But a number of users took the babysitter’s side, arguing the mother overreacted.
“You didn’t go through an agency, you went through a family contact,” one person wrote, coming down on the side of “you’re the a**hole”.
“At short notice, apparently. Sounds a bit ad hoc, but that’s fine. But then, as soon as the shoe is on the other foot, you sack her for violating an unwritten rule?
“As soon as you found out someone was in the house was the time to panic. You didn’t. You waited for a ‘gotcha’ moment. If you were that concerned you should have gone straight home and sacked her on the spot. You could have called and figured out what was going on at least. Get off the pedestal. Yeesh.”
Another user said they could “totally see why Gabby didn’t think it was a big deal”.
“It was her mother, and she was only there for a short while,” they wrote.
“But, I can also see why it would be alarming knowing that a stranger was in your home with your kids. Personally, though, I think [you’re the a**hole]. Once you found out it was her mother who was giving her a ride home, I would think that you’d agree that it wasn’t a big deal, so I do think firing her was an overreaction.
“Better to then just tell her that you were uncomfortable with that, and in the future, if something like this happens, so please ask/give you a heads up first.”
A third wrote, “Her mom came in for 15 minutes and then left to wait for her daughter in the car so she could give her a ride home. They didn’t stay the whole shift and have a party. You sound horrible.”