New nanny sends email quitting less than 24 hours before starting job- WWYD

[elliput]

This seems a bit of a personal attack on OP, no? In any case, she did say she planned to pay that nanny a severance so it isn't out of line for her to expect reasonable notice of a nanny quitting.

That was not my intention. My intention was to point out that the advice given here was to keep it vague and impersonal. Since that is what the employer was advised to do, should not the (potential) employee be allowed to do the same thing?

[janine]

That was not my intention. My intention was to point out that the advice given here was to keep it vague and impersonal. Since that is what the employer was advised to do, should not the (potential) employee be allowed to do the same thing?

I didn't read the link but isn't vague and impersonal to spare the person being laid off in that case? So the reverse (or inverse?) is true, the person quitting with 24 hr notice via email should have maybe provided more personal details in order to to spare the other person frustration/anger/wonderment that would no doubt result from being left in this position via email and all avenues of comunication then shut down.

[chlobo]

I didn't read the link but isn't vague and impersonal to spare the person being laid off in that case? So the reverse (or inverse?) is true, the person quitting with 24 hr notice via email should have maybe provided more personal details in order to to spare the other person frustration/anger/wonderment that would no doubt result from being left in this position via email and all avenues of comunication then shut down.

I have to disagree here. In the previous instance the OP had a long list of reasons for letting the nanny go. It was suggested that she not list all these reasons out and just be vague because there was *nothing* that was going to change her mind about letting the nanny go and why go into the details.

In the current instance, the same rules would apply. What if the nanny came back and said "well I think you'd be a difficult family to work for" or "I found a job paying twice as much"? In the first case the OPs feelings would be hurt and in the second case the OP might have felt inclined to offer twice as much money. In either case, the nanny wasn't going to change her mind so why lay out that level of detail?

[babygirl1029]

She did explain. She said she decided to go a different direction. Should not the employer allow the candidate the respect that her decision is really none of their business? Because, it isn't.

People get laid off from work with absolutely no notice whatsoever (and many times without any type of severance), the employer in most cases can just say "Sorry, business decision". No other reason is necessary. Why should a candidate for a position have to justify any more than that? She made a business decision.

I'm going to pull up a past thread here by the same OP- How to Fire a Nanny? and a quote from OP

This does feel like a personal attack and I appreciate OP recognizing
this. And comes across very strangely as if you were, how should I put it nicely, "researching info on me." That was a very different situation and the previous nanny was more than nicely compensated. She has since contacted me and there are no hard feelings so in the end it would appear the situation was handled appropriately. But honestly that is neither here nor there.

Several OP have noted that many assumptions have been made. This question/post clearly has taken on a life of its own. I chose not to comment further but as I have noted I do greatly appreciate the comments that were relevant to my initial question. I hope this is not considered poor Internet etiquette. I also appreciate the PM about keeping my cool amidst some posts that appear to attack my character.

[elliput]

This does feel like a personal attack and I appreciate OP recognizing
this. And comes across very strangely as if you were, how should I put it nicely, "researching info on me." That was a very different situation and the previous nanny was more than nicely compensated. She has since contacted me and there are no hard feelings so in the end it would appear the situation was handled appropriately. But honestly that is neither here nor there.

Several OP have noted that many assumptions have been made. This question/post clearly has taken on a life of its own. I chose not to comment further but as I have noted I do greatly appreciate the comments that were relevant to my initial question. I hope this is not considered poor Internet etiquette. I also appreciate the PM about keeping my cool amidst some posts that appear to attack my character.

My apologies for making you feel that way. Maybe it is just habit from when I was a moderator, but I do tend to go back and read old posts to get a more fleshed out view of a situation. Especially for someone whose name I don't recognize and is asking for advice with a very small posting history. It just happened that you had a different nanny issue for which similar advice was offered.

I'm glad things are fine with the young woman and that everyone is moving forward.

[daisysmom]

I am taken aback that you and Haged seem to feel that the nanny shoulders little or no normative responsibility or blame for quitting a job she committed to with 12 hours notice on a Sunday night and that she should be entitled to evade the reputational consequences of her decision. But that the working mother-employers, apparently particularly those that work at demanding, male-dominated or high-paying jobs, have shirked their responsibilities because they don't have a backup care fairy they can magically summon to provide full time childcare for multiple weeks. Notably, at the types of jobs I am describing there is no "other option," there is no daycare that takes your kids for late nights, hospital call, last-minute depositions, and longer days when you are traveling for work. And the comments that high-achieving professional women have made their bed and now have no right to expect they be treated with professional or personal consideration and respect by their newly hired employees are extremely surprising to me. Have returned to the 1970s here where there is delight in blaming working mothers?

Yes, this.

I intentionally stayed away from this thread the last couple of days because I was so shocked at the sentiment that I was feeling - that as a professional woman with a high paying job, I either needed to pay my nanny the same that I was making if I wanted her to be dependable, or that I was kidding myself to think that I could have it all. I disagree so strongly with that. Echo the quote above.

[daisysmom]

I know *SO* many professional women who have cut back/slowed down/mommy-tracked/quit all together in order to have more time to be a mom. I also know two fathers who have been less aggressive in their careers because their wives were both in high powered, very demanding careers. We're kidding ourselves if we think we (as PARENTS, not just mothers) can have it all, all of the time.

In my 20 years of practicing law at 2 big AmLaw 100 firms, I think I have probably seen more than 50 women leave the practice of law once they had kids. I ended up seeing several of them on New Year's Eve and together, we all collaborated and could not think of one person among all the women we knew that quit because they couldn't eventually find dependable child care (and the large majority of us have used nannies). While the search is stressful, we all agreed that communication was the key to the relationship and insisting on dependability. As I said in posts earlier, that meant not calling out sick for a normal cold/cough or mental health day, and not taking off for bad weather, in particular. In exchange, we paid the nannies well (but not equal to our salary, as I think someone suggested here would be required) and the nannies had pretty low stress fun jobs in our opinion (we had a nanny that napped every day when our DD was napping... that's a pretty hard thing to accomplish in a non-nanny job). I don't think we were particularly "lucky"... I think nannies generally do understand that dependability (starting out by reputation are they key to their job).

Women do choose to leave the legal profession to stay at home, or to take other less stressful (or more personally rewarding) jobs. But seriously, not one that I know of personally has left because she couldn't find childcare.

I do personally resent the implication that women should recognize that they can't rely on their nanny (or any other childcare provider) like they would rely on their spouse or other family member. I just don't believe that is true. I do think a lot of men in my profession have thought that in the past, and I have spent a lot of energy the last 20 years prooving them wrong.

And like someone else noted... this is not just a "high powered" professional argument. Bank tellers, grocery store workers, factory workers... you name it, if they have children, they are farming-out the daily 9-5 or whatever hour 'maintenance' of them. Whether that be to another relative, a nanny, or a daycare center --- they need to be able to depend on that childcare. To suggest that they can't is beyond me.