Sometimes your nanny becomes another member of the family. Other times — well, you have the situation that one mom has on Reddit. According to the woman, her nanny recently started and already wants to start charging her extra for some duties and responsibilities. Although that might seem reasonable, people online pointed out that many of these tasks are pretty mundane, which leaves the mom wondering “Is this normal?”
The mom only recently hired her first nanny for her 7-month-old son.
As the Original Poster explained in her post on the r/Nanny forum, so far the new hire is “wonderful” and she “stays on top of all her duties.” But there is one big problem: “how she handles atypical duties.”
“For example, upon interview, we asked if she would be able to do small things for us,” she explained, such as sign for deliveries, letting the dog in when he returns from day care, put the dog’s food bowl on the ground, “and occasionally turn the oven on so it’s preheats on our way home and we are ready to cook.”
“These tasks are not daily and we told her we would give her a head’s up if we needed these things done,” the OP explained.
The nanny told the OP it was fine — ”for an additional fee.”
The OP asked if the woman would like her to increase her hourly fee to cover the charges, but she refused.
“She said she’ll see how it goes and then decide how much compensation she would like for these tasks,” the OP recalled.
Well, the end of two weeks has come and gone.
Before her nanny left for the day, the OP brought up the issue of pay again, but her nanny again asked for more time to think.
“This morning I received an email from her with an itemized invoice for each task, how often, and an amount,” the OP wrote. “The tasks were not limited to the four things we discussed during the interview.”
She charged the OP for things like closing the garage door after the OP left for work, letting the dog in ($5 each time, six times in two weeks), signing for a package ($8), preheating the oven ($10 each time and the nanny did it twice), and checking if the garage door was closed ($5).
In total, the nanny had calculated $93 in additional charges.
Again, the OP asked if she’d like for that amount to be added to her hourly fee, and again her nanny said no.
“She said no and that she would continue to send me biweekly invoices, paid via Venmo,” the OP recalled.
That put the OP in a weird position.
Even though she’s happy to pay her nanny for these tasks, a friend clued her in that it's not really typical to pay nannies additional money for those types of chores.
“Based on her resume, she is a professional nanny, so I want to trust that she knows what she is doing with regards to compensation,” the OP wrote. “But based on what my friends told me, I’m not sure. I don’t know any nannies personally so I figured I would bring it to the nanny Reddit for some insight.”
People in the comments were all in agreement: Her nanny was taking advantage of OP.
Many of the commenters were nannies themselves, and they had some strong opinions about the OP's situation.
"Nanny here — I think she is confused lol," wrote one person. "It is common for parents to add $1-10 (maybe $1-5) to the hourly rate if they are asking the nanny to do light household chores like dishes, laundry, vacuuming. I wouldn't consider any of the tasks you mentioned cause to charge more as most of them only take a few seconds to complete. I think she is taking advantage of you. I can't imagine asking for $93 for such small tasks."
"That’s sooo bizarre to me personally. I would never dream of nickel and diming my [Nanny Family] like this," another nanny wrote.
A third commenter had another theory: "It looks like she just doesn't want to pay taxes which shouldn't be your problem."
Another commenter suggested that if the mom wants to try to make things work she can offer to raise her hourly rate $1 — and if she still refuses the OP should consider "letting her go."
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