Social Media and My Nanny

I saw this post today about nannies and social media on Care.com, which is the site where I found my nanny.  While I intended this blog to focus on the property damage my nanny caused, there were other issues too I feel compelled to mention, such as the fact she was constantly texting while on the job,  Tweeting and posting updates to Facebook, checking into Foursquare, and posting pics of my son on Instagram and everywhere on social media sites.

While I think its great she enjoyed my son and her job enough to want to share it with the world, I know I personally would ask the parents for permission or at least think twice before I posted pics of their child, which she did not.

It was on the advice of Care.com in a e-newsletter that I checked up on my nanny online.  That’s when I found  out all sorts of things about my nanny I never knew.  First, she was blogging about having bipolar disorder, which is something she had never disclosed to us.  That explained the days where she didn’t get out of bed preceded by her “up” days of unbridled exuberance for everything from fake bacon to footie pajamas.

I also learned that after a few months working for us she was planning on leaving our employ and seeking a new place to live.  That’s all fine, except she promised to work for us one year, as we told  her we wanted consistency in our son’s life and we needed a  year’s commitment, which she assured us she was prepared to give.

She also had a multitude of complaints about her living situation, which she had never expressed to us.  She Tweeting things like, “So burned out.  Having a horrible stressful day, need to find a new job and living situation fast,”  I’m paraphrasing, but that was the idea.  Please.  She worked 3-5 hours a day, going to the park, playing with my son at the house, going to museums with him, etc.  Her rent, expenses, groceries, etc, were paid for, and she had no responsibilities around the house.  Can’t wait to hear what she posts when she has a real job with real pressures.  Actually, I don’t care what she has to say.  Since she left I have not checked up on her posts, and I really don’t give a darn about her personally — but I am livid about the shape she left my house in, and how she left, which I will get to.

The bigger issues was that I saw she was posting all sorts of information about my family, videos of her in my house, and the clincher, Tweets WHILE SHE WAS DRIVING my son to school.  She also posted a pics of a strange man sleeping on my couch on a weekend my family was at Disneyland, and she did not have permission to have guests in the house while we were away.

This is a photo Samantha Freidman posted of a strange man sleeping on my couch during a weekend I was gone to Disneyland. She did not have permission to have anyone in our home, and in fact she did not have permission to be in our home. Our agreement was for her own room and bath, NOT to share our home.

When I discovered she was Tweeting while driving with my son, that was it.  She was already leaving by then, but it made me have a whole different feeling about her and her regard for my son’s safety and my family’s privacy.

Good riddance Samantha, but first, let me show you the condition she left her room in at my house before she ran out in a hurry without a goodbye.  Once I saw the room, I realized why she had to run.

The Unstable Nanny – Red Flags and Ambulances

Shortly after starting to babysit for my son, Sam began to have unexplained spells of vomiting and fainting, or so she told us.  My partner predicted after the first episode that it was going to happen more, and that our new nanny would start developing sudden and unexplained illness a lot.  When Sam informed us that she passed out and had to have an ambulance come to our home to aid her, my partner shook her head and sighed, “I told you so.”

What followed were days of Sam sleeping for entire days, into night, not showering or getting out of her pajamas, and emerging from her room only long enough to put some fake bacon or a veggie burger (she was vegetarian) into the microwave and eat it.

These day-long sleeping episodes were on her days off and on her free time, so I told my partner it really wasn’t a problem, but my partner warned this was going to be a pattern, and that soon Sam would be sick all the time.  Once again, my partner was right.

Next … “Sicko, Psycho, or Both.”

Samantha F. and Her Chinchilla Arrive

I found my nanny, Samantha F., on Care.com around August 2011.  She had a vivacious personality, and she came highly recommended from a mom she babysat for in her hometown in Newtown, Pennsylvania, but Sam was not all that she seemed.

I was seeking a live-in babysitter to look after my four-year-old son about 20 to 25 hours a week while I was at work, and in exchange, she could live rent-free at my home.  I could not pay her because in 2009 I had been laid off for about 17 months, and I was still in financial recovery.  While I didn’t have a lot of cashflow, I did have an extra room, so room & board exchange for babysitting seemed a good arrangement for us.  Besides a private room and bath, the nanny would also be welcome to eat any food in the house and to join our family for meals.

Sam was quirky, which we noticed right away in our long-distance Skype interview, such as when she wanted to introduce us by webcam to her pet chinchilla Misty, and she was a Harry Potter fanatic — so much so that she met most if not all of her friends through a Harry Potter fan club, but I have no problem with a little eccentricity, so we “hired” her.

Sam had lived in Los Angeles for several months the previous summer, and she had visited the city many times and liked it, and she was looking to move to LA and needed a place to live.  She loved caring for kids, and though she had a college degree in film studies, she had not been able to find a job in her field, so she planned to be a nanny for a year or so while she got acclimated in LA and explored the job market.  It seemed like a good fit for us.

We told her it would be okay to bring her pet chinchilla, which is an exotic rodent that resembles a rabbit with small, mouse-like ears and a long bushy tail.  They have super-soft fur, which is why when I mentioned it to my mother she said, “I hear they make nice coats.”

Sam had an enormous cage shipped to our house which was waiting in her room when I picked her up from the airport.  She was pretty absorbed with getting the chinchilla settled in, but other than that we seemed off to a good start.

She was pretty responsible and reliable — she helped get my son ready in the mornings and walked him to school.  She then picked him up in the afternoon and played with him until one of us got home.  She was playful with my son, and animated and energetic,and my son took to her pretty quickly.  It was all good in the beginning.

Then, shortly after moving in, she complained that the chinchilla was having trouble adjusting, and she was distraught about it.  Misty kept going under the bed and Sam couldn’t get her out.  She asked if I had any cardboard to put around the perimeter of the bed so that Misty couldn’t go under the bed.

I was not happy that the chinchilla was out of the cage and on my floor, but my partner insisted that I was being too picky and that I shouldn’t say anything.  Though when I saw that she had used tape to affix the cardboard to my designer Ashland & Hill platform bed frame, I asked her to please remove the tape as it might damage the finish of my very expensive bed.  She agreed that she would remove the tape, and I bit my tongue about saying anything about the free-roaming chinchilla.

Unfortunatly it was only the beginning of the trouble with Sam and the chinchilla.  About a week after arriving, Sam stormed out of the house, as if she were in an argument with a boyfriend, saying, “I’ve had it with Misty today. I need to get out of here for a while.”

This was odd behavior, but I wrote it off to the stress of being in a new home and a new job.

Then, I went into our laundry room and found the floor littered with little rat poops.  They were chinchilla poops, but they looked the same as rat poops.  I mentioned it to Sam, who said she had cleaned Misty’s cage with my mini-vac, and they must have fallen on the floor when she dumped it.  She said, “I wasn’t thinking.  Of course normal people wouldn’t be okay with poops in their vacuum.  I will get my own to use in the future.”

OK, I thought.  She understood, this was not acceptable.

Then, I started to see the poops everywhere in the house.  In the kitchen, in the hall, in the family room.

Sam explained that they must have stuck to her feet when she walked around the room, and then she tracked them around the house.  She wore “footy” pajamas around the house, so this must be what happened, she said.

OK, this was not acceptable.  I wanted to tell her that the chinchilla must stay in the cage, but again, my partner said it was not a big deal.  She was good with my son, so I should just let it go.

Well, I did let it go.  Next, the consequences…