One thing with daycare is if your kid is sick they can't go. You still need a back up plan.

37 days is a lot. Did you consider a change before jury duty came up?

Do what you have to for coverage. Consider your options for later if you think you need to. You can't let her go because of jury duty, though.

If money isn't an issue and you like the nanny, keep her and sign up for one of the backup childcare services that you can call in when she's out.

If you fire her because she has jury duty that would make you a huge POS, amoral and unethical human being.

If you can’t find somebody, it’s because you are not looking hard enough. Every single day I see people looking for nanny work. All you have to do is make it abundantly clear that this is a temporary job that you will find somebody.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Out for illnesses and emergencies. How dare she?!?!

OP here. I don't blame her, things happen, but I'm just realizing that I don't think we're set up in a way to handle a lot of time off. She took 37 days off last year not including 13 paid holidays, and while I was able to cover them with my PTO/get last minute help, it was a struggle sometimes to get coverage. The more I think about it, the more I think it might make sense to transition to daycare instead. Regardless, that doesn't solve my immediate problem of jury duty.

37 days?! No. Get a new nanny

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Out for illnesses and emergencies. How dare she?!?!

OP here. I don't blame her, things happen, but I'm just realizing that I don't think we're set up in a way to handle a lot of time off. She took 37 days off last year not including 13 paid holidays, and while I was able to cover them with my PTO/get last minute help, it was a struggle sometimes to get coverage. The more I think about it, the more I think it might make sense to transition to daycare instead. Regardless, that doesn't solve my immediate problem of jury duty.

Did you pay her or the 37 days? Would something like care.com be an option? Put something out on a neighborhood listserv...maybe someone would do a short term nanny share? Can you husband and you stagger your hours to cover most of the day without using leave?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Out for illnesses and emergencies. How dare she?!?!

OP here. I don't blame her, things happen, but I'm just realizing that I don't think we're set up in a way to handle a lot of time off. She took 37 days off last year not including 13 paid holidays, and while I was able to cover them with my PTO/get last minute help, it was a struggle sometimes to get coverage. The more I think about it, the more I think it might make sense to transition to daycare instead. Regardless, that doesn't solve my immediate problem of jury duty.

Wow that’s 50 days off out of like, 250ish work days. That’s insane. I’d unfortunately find someone new or do daycare. But PPs are correct you can’t fire her when she’s on jury duty. That’s tricky.

Anonymous wrote:Out for illnesses and emergencies. How dare she?!?!

OP here. I don't blame her, things happen, but I'm just realizing that I don't think we're set up in a way to handle a lot of time off. She took 37 days off last year not including 13 paid holidays, and while I was able to cover them with my PTO/get last minute help, it was a struggle sometimes to get coverage. The more I think about it, the more I think it might make sense to transition to daycare instead. Regardless, that doesn't solve my immediate problem of jury duty.

Can you fly in a grandparent?

Out for illnesses and emergencies. How dare she?!?!

I thought you could get out of jury duty if you take care of small children. Did she pursue this possibility?

We have a two year old and a four month old. She has been with us since the two year old was four months old, and has otherwise been great. However, due to various illnesses and emergencies, we have given her much more time off than the two weeks vacation + one week of sick pay that we initially agreed to (we pay guaranteed hours, so she still gets paid). This just might be the final straw, because I'm tired of scrambling for care. I'm stressed about jury duty because it's difficult to find last minute care, but we could potentially find a daycare within the next 4-6 weeks.

If you are going to let her go, pay her for the next few months, and look at childcare centers. There is always somewhere with openings. How old are your kids?

You can't fire her for jury duty.

Our nanny was picked as a juror for a trial that is expected to last several weeks. Has anyone else had this happen, and how did you handle it? We don't have backup childcare. I get a lot of PTO at my job, so I generally use that to cover our nanny's sick days and vacations, but I don't have enough PTO to cover sick/vacation days and several weeks of jury duty. I am desperately looking for sitters, but it's difficult to find last minute childcare during weekdays (versus date nights) and of course daycares are completely full. Money isn't really the issue; we can afford it, but the childcare availability just isn't there. We also had our nanny call out a number of times for 3-5 days at a time due to illness. I'm starting to wonder if we should let our nanny go and just go with daycare for the sake of reliability. Does anyone have an idea how that would work? I think we're legally required to keep her job open for her, but what if this experience means that we no longer need someone in that role because we transition to daycare instead?