Spring Break, my sister asks me to do her a favor and watch a co-workers kids. The girl doesn’t have much money, grandma is going to pay the bill, please give her a deal. I’ll be honest, I gave her an awesome deal – 2 kids for $80 for the week. Majorly cheap, yes I was stupid but it was a friend of Karen’s so I thought I’d help her out. The girls show up Tuesday, miss Wednesday & Thursday (no call to me) and come on Friday. One of the girls gets sick and pukes all over my hard wood floors and mom doesn’t show until 2 hours later after our call. With all the confusion of having 10 kids in the house I forget to remind “mom” she owes me child care money. Mom gets out of the house without paying. I call, leave messages letting her know I “messed up” and forgot to remind her – KNOWING she left quickly so she didn’t have to pay. After numerous calls/messages, she finally returns my call via text a week later letting me know her youngest (the one that puked) had bronchitis and she had to use my money on medications. UGH! SO!! That explains why I have a house full of coughing snotty kids… GRRRR! She asked if she could pay the following Tuesday (her payday) and I said that was fine.
Tuesday comes and Karen calls me to let me know she had my $40. HUH? It wasn’t $40 it was $80. Mom seemed to think my charge was $20 per day not $80 for the week. I called mom, texted and then sent a letter through Karen informing her she owed me and additional $40 because my DAILY rate is $25 per child per day… No response… SO.. on to the present…
I’m at Michael’s picking up stuff for my Daisy girls tonight and my cell phone rings… private caller.. goes to voice mail… OH MY FUCKING GOD! This stupid cow actually called me to see if I would be willing to watch her kids tomorrow morning!! Her usual Saturday babysitter called off and she has an emergency, she needs to work tomorrow but doesn’t have a babysitter. Please call before 7am tomorrow morning to let her know if I could watch the kids… #1 – I don’t work on Saturdays… #2 it will be a cold day in fucking hell before your kids EVER walk into my home again. THE NERVE OF THIS WOMAN!! GRRRRR!!
I immediately called Karen to inform her she’d be short handed tomorrow at work because this lady needed a baby sitter and I was NOT available…
GRRRR… Unfucking believeable….
May 2nd, 2010 at 10:47 am
No good deed goes unpunished.
However, in my opinion, you should thank the woman, she just gave you one of the cheapest versions of this lesson that I know of.
I have a suggestion though: if you insist on learning this lesson again, get the money up front. The lesson can can get expensive really quickly if you don’t. This would be the voice of experience, my last lesson on this subject cost me almost 5 grand. I’m reasonably sure the next time I decide to learn this lesson I can keep it below that figure, but with inflation and all, you never know.