I can’t wait until they’re all in school

Since Scooter was born, we've had four nannies, not counting the occasional fill-in. The first was allergic to the cat, so she left after about three months. The second stayed for three years, until she had a baby and didn't want to make the long commute with a newborn. Number three overlapped with number two (for while number two was pregnant, and the twins were newborns), and has continued to work off-and-on since then. Number four was the full-time replacement for number two, and left after a year when we started putting the twins in preschool and cut back her hours.

Since four quit, three has been filling in two days a week (the kids are in preschool three days a week), but she had to go back to school after the new year, so had to quit as well. So, the average tenure of a nanny for us has been around 18 months.

We're waiting for slots for the twins to start preschool five days a week, and until then, we've been looking for someone to be a fill-in for an indefinite period. We thought we had someone: she was great with the twins, did housework, lived nearby, always arrived early, and had a different assignment on the other three days of the week.

And then....I'm not sure what happened.

As soon as we started dealing with issues of pay, everything seemed to go sour. First, she asked for $20/hour, when her other assignment was paying $12. The most we'd ever paid was a little over $15, and that was number three, who has twenty years experience and a degree in child psychology. This nanny has only a few years experience, and no degree of any sort. After consulting with our nanny service, we offered her $14, with a raise to $15 in March if she was still doing well.

Next, she got very upset when her paycheck was not ready when she arrived on the last day of the pay period (i.e. before she actually worked all the hours she was being paid for). Perhaps she's been spoiled by a couple of very generous and trusting employers, but I've certainly never been paid in advance, and none of our other nannies has ever asked for that particular perk.

The next problem arose when she complained that we had deducted taxes from her paycheck. Now, I know a lot of people pay their nannies "under the table" to avoid the headaches of the payroll tax system, but we've never done that. Nevertheless, she wanted us to pay her $14/hour net after taxes, instead of gross. Oh, and she wanted us to pay into state Unemployment Insurance, so she could collect benefits after her (short-term) assignment ends.

A check with our attorney for such things confirmed that we weren't obligated to pay for state unemployment in her case, and I informed the nanny of this.

"Well, I just thought you should know," she said, "I'm looking for a new assignment now, but I'll keep working for you until I find something."

I wished her luck, and told her there would be no need for her to come in on Monday.

We had already found other childcare.