The Nanny Diaries, part 2
It was a Friday, around 7pm. And this was the very last thing I expected to hear out of my nanny’s mouth:
“Um, yeah, it’s okay if today is my last day?”
Um, yeah, if by that you mean that today is your last day…until Monday, is what I would have liked to have said. Except that is not at all what she meant. She quit. No two week notice. Nothing. According to her, she wasn’t unhappy. She didn’t have another job in the works. And she didn’t care that we were not longer going to sign papers for her.
And poof. Just like that. She was gone. She was gone, even though we had done everything right.
I was upset, pissed, annoyed, and panicked. I was upset for the kids. They loved her. And I thought she loved them. I remember how much my heart broke when Josh said, “Michelle left because of me, right?” I was pissed because she totally blindsided us and didn’t even feel badly that she was leaving us in the lurch. She didn’t care that the husband and I both had jobs we weren’t going to be able to go to on Monday. I was annoyed that I had opened up my home, my family, my children to someone who took advantage of my openness. I was panicked because I had to scramble to find someone new, someone we liked, and someone who wouldn’t just leave.
And, as it turns out, it wasn’t that Michelle was unhappy. It was that another mother approached her in the park and gave her a better offer – more money and fewer children to care for.
NANNY POACHED.
Oh my god, we were nanny poached. Honestly, I didn’t know that things like this happened IN REAL LIFE. I mean, I thought it only happened in fictitious books that took place in expensive NYC neighborhoods. I didn’t think it happened in suburban Toronto. And I most certainly didn’t know that there were other mothers - in the park I send my children to play in every day – who were capable of doing something like this.
And as we watched our ex-nanny wheel her suitcase down the street, we picked up the phone to start desperately calling nanny agencies in the hopes of finding one that wouldn’t find an offer she couldn’t refuse…
TO BE CONTINUED...
An original Canada Moms Blog post. You can also find Ali embarrassing herself over at Cheaper Than Therapy and embarrassing celebrities over at Juice: Entertainment News with Extra Pulp.
