I gently informed nanny we're letting her go, and now I don't know if she'll show up tomorrow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, you should have told her last Friday. That would have given her the weekend to process things and not have the feelings be so raw.

It's hard to be fired and then be expected to show up to work the next day.

Agree that would have been ideal, but we didn't know until today and I wanted to tell her as soon as we knew.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nannies are fickle like that. In the past I have always lied and told them I would offer a large bonus if they work until our agreed end date and then just tell them I would mail it and never do it. They only really earned what they worked for, but it goes to show how greedy nannies are.

What a jerk! I hope they got it in writing so that you had to pay or go to court!

I'm assuming the "nannies are fickle" PP is a troll. Not worth acknowledging.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am flummoxed that you don't get why your nanny may not want to come in tomorrow and is on the fence about the rest of the week. She's looking for another job, and mourning the loss of this one. the fact you need this spelled out for you is pathetic.

I'm flummoxed why she's not bright enough to realize she's jeopardizing a good reference and severance payment. Taking a "you can't fire me, I quit" attitude isn't particularly impressive.

I've had job transitions myself but did my searching in my spare time. I didn't quit showing up for work but expect to be paid for inconveniencing my employer. Nor did I expect my employer would say thank you if I bailed out on them without wrapping up expected work.

I expect her to be unhappy about the transition, but I also expected some degree of professionalism. This isn't a "we hate you, you're fired, now get back to work" situation, but rather a situation where I've tried to provide her the opportunity to make a more gradual (and compensated) leave-on-good-terms transition.

The new nanny is available to start immediately, but I intentionally deferred her start time to give current nanny a gentler wind-down. Personally I'd feel far more betrayed if my employer handed me my notice and a check and said don't come back as opposed to giving me a week to say goodbye and make sure I had my belongings, etc., plus another week of paid time after that. A check and an immediate goodbye would indicate no trust and probable ill will. That's not what we were going for, at all.

And you chose not to inform her that you were looking for someone else, so she feels betrayed. Geez, you hired her less than a year ago, most nannies don't accept a position thinking it's going to be that short, of course she was shocked and hurt! Why in the world didn't you screen for language when you first hired. At the very minimum, why didn't you tell her that you were looking to hire someone else due to language?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am flummoxed that you don't get why your nanny may not want to come in tomorrow and is on the fence about the rest of the week. She's looking for another job, and mourning the loss of this one. the fact you need this spelled out for you is pathetic.

I'm flummoxed why she's not bright enough to realize she's jeopardizing a good reference and severance payment. Taking a "you can't fire me, I quit" attitude isn't particularly impressive.

I've had job transitions myself but did my searching in my spare time. I didn't quit showing up for work but expect to be paid for inconveniencing my employer. Nor did I expect my employer would say thank you if I bailed out on them without wrapping up expected work.

I expect her to be unhappy about the transition, but I also expected some degree of professionalism. This isn't a "we hate you, you're fired, now get back to work" situation, but rather a situation where I've tried to provide her the opportunity to make a more gradual (and compensated) leave-on-good-terms transition.

The new nanny is available to start immediately, but I intentionally deferred her start time to give current nanny a gentler wind-down. Personally I'd feel far more betrayed if my employer handed me my notice and a check and said don't come back as opposed to giving me a week to say goodbye and make sure I had my belongings, etc., plus another week of paid time after that. A check and an immediate goodbye would indicate no trust and probable ill will. That's not what we were going for, at all.

And you chose not to inform her that you were looking for someone else, so she feels betrayed. Geez, you hired her less than a year ago, most nannies don't accept a position thinking it's going to be that short, of course she was shocked and hurt! Why in the world didn't you screen for language when you first hired. At the very minimum, why didn't you tell her that you were looking to hire someone else due to language?

I was looking for a regular tutor but instead came across someone looking for full time nanny work. I am well aware that immersion in language throughout your day is a far better way to learn than tutoring. We considered it and decided it was the best thing for our family. I told this all to our departing nanny (and she's aware we've long been searching for a good language resource for our son). It wasn't a case of setting out to hire a new nanny with this language. Rather, we stumbled across a really great "immersion nanny" opportunity that we couldn't pass up.

Terminated nanny has been with us for about 11.5 months so close to a year. We didn't hire and then drop her in short order. As for screening for language when hiring, we had certainly tried to find a nanny with this language in our earlier search but had no luck (not even anything close to luck). We were thrilled to find this new candidate and didn't feel we could pass her up.

[Anonymous]

Eh, she sounds immature. My NF let me know they'd be letting me go because MB decided she was missing too much of her child's life. They gave me five week notice and said they certainly didn't expect me to stay the whole time, but I finished out my commitment to them. Maybe she has some seriously sore feelings about being replaced by another nanny? When you hired her, did you tell her you were looking for someone who spoke this certain language?

[Anonymous]

It is understandable that your nanny is a bit caught off guard that she was let go today.

Perhaps she needs to let this new info sink in first.

Right now, initially she is in an anger stage. You really cannot blame her for that.

If you wanted someone who spoke a certain language OP, did you just hire her until you found that certain someone? If that was the case, you should have told the nanny this upon hire so she wouldn't be blindsided.

In all honesty, who wants to come back to work after being let go over something that is obviously not her fault. She did nothing wrong, yet she is being screwed out of a job.

She may feel like she was deceived in a way along with feeling betrayed.

If she doesn't come back to work this week, you should offer her something still. Because like I stated, she didn't do anything wrong in her job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, you should have told her last Friday. That would have given her the weekend to process things and not have the feelings be so raw.

It's hard to be fired and then be expected to show up to work the next day.

Agree that would have been ideal, but we didn't know until today and I wanted to tell her as soon as we knew.

+1 to this PP, telling her you're letting her go with /barely/ two weeks notice and expecting her to show up the next day is extremely insensitive. You say she is handling this unprofessionally, but I say YOU as her MB handled this unprofessionally:

This nonsense about "we didn't know until today" is ridiculous. Sure, maybe you found and met this person Sunday and wanted to tell nanny in person and didn't get confirmation about new nanny accepting the job until Monday, but that is no excuse. Regardless of when new nanny says she wants to start, it would have been EXTREMELY easy for you to say "you can start in two weeks," thereby allowing your current nanny to work until this Friday, at which point you could've THEN given her notice (one week more to work, one week off paid). That would've allowed her the weekend to process the change, and get a jump start on her job search, before showing up Monday. I don't care whatever excuse you may have about "new nanny wanted to start right away," it is standard for most jobs to have a week or two wait time before starting after accepting the position, and any decent nanny will understand that you want to give old nanny two weeks notice (honestly it would be a red flag for me if a family hired me and let their previous nanny go without sufficient notice).

Poor form, OP.

[Anonymous]

For the person being let go, it's never gentle. It sounds like you tried to do it right - gave two weeks notice, one working, one not. You didn't blame her and offered to help with finding her another job. That's really the best you can do in this situation, but for her - she probably loves your child, she may have thought you'd raise some issues with her, but not fire her, and the language thing being a trump card probably is genuinely surprising to her since you hired her without it.

[Anonymous]

OP here. We didn't hire her expecting we'd later find a nanny speaking the target language. We honestly figured the only way that would happen would be moving to an au pair, which we are not able to do for at least a couple more years. So there wasn't any reason to say "by the way, we'll be looking for [language] nanny and will replace you once we find one" because that wasn't the plan.

To the "poor form" PP, there are MANY ways I could have handled this that would have REALLY been poor form. 1. Good morning, you're fired, take good care of the kids today! 2. You're fired, get your things and go now. 3. You're fired, and remember how in the contract it says you have to pay us back any extra vacation time you've taken but not yet accrued? Well, you're 33 hours over so we'll deduct that from your last check. I could go on. Would it have been ideal to tell her Friday? Yes, but I had nothing to tell her.

The new nanny is already waiting longer than she wants to start, and I have to balance potentially losing a rare find against managing existing nanny's feelings. I genuinely did want to tell existing nanny ASAP when we were certain because it would feel extremely duplicitous to work with her all week knowing she would be terminated and acting like all was well.

She's disappointed, I get it, but now I am likewise disappointed in her. Unfortunate to end this way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I told our nanny today that we are letting her go, and making a change to a nanny that speaks a somewhat hard-to-find (outside of au pair situation) target language.

Nanny was definitely surprised, yet at the same time questioned whether the language issue was the real reason, and even after I confirmed, she said she'd been "sensing things" lately as if we were not happy with her. I asked shed to finish the week with us and we'd give her a cash payout for the next week. She did not make clear whether she'll show tomorrow or the rest of the week. She was not happy. I told her I'd write a reference letter and otherwise help with new job. Not sure what else I could have done other than not make the change, but it was important for us to do so for our family.

Ugh.

You should have given her a check for two weeks severance and let her leave with dignity. Your mistake. You do not fire someone and then ask then to keep working for you.

I hope the target-language nanny works out for you but that is such a specific thing to look for that you may have lost a good, loving and responsible nanny for a bad nanny just because she speaks a certain language.

[Anonymous]

Am I the only one who wouldn't want to be fired and then immediately shown the door?

So is the flip side of this that the nanny family should tell you to leave same day if you give 2 weeks notice that you're taking a new job?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Am I the only one who wouldn't want to be fired and then immediately shown the door?

So is the flip side of this that the nanny family should tell you to leave same day if you give 2 weeks notice that you're taking a new job?

I think of it more than being let off the hook than shown the door. I have only been fired from one job, a job in a bank (secretary to a VP - not someone handling money) and they had my check ready and I was done. I didn't even need to finish out the day. It is no where near the same thing as giving notice and helping train your replacement.

Our nanny made it clear that her severance was tied directly to her length of notice. She will give one week notice if she wants to leave and we will give one week's severance if we want her to leave. If we want her to leave, we are required to do it immediately.

It is the best way to handle any firing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Am I the only one who wouldn't want to be fired and then immediately shown the door?

So is the flip side of this that the nanny family should tell you to leave same day if you give 2 weeks notice that you're taking a new job?

I would want to be relived of my duties immediately but given time to say good-bye to my charges.

Notice and firing are two very different things and not equivalent or the "flip-side" of each other. I cannot imagine a parent who wants an unhappy nanny watching their children!!

[Anonymous]

OP here. I'm thinking best approach may just be to write her a check for the rest of this week and be done. It doesn't work for me to be left in limbo not knowing if she will show up to work the remaining days this week. New nanny can take over immediately (and is here today, saving my bacon as I have a major work project to do today).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. The intent was 2 week notice; one to do a wind-down here, one week paid but not reporting for work. I don't have the extra cash laying around to pay two weeks of full salary to two different people, so this was my best effort.

She has chosen not to come in tomorrow and "let me know" whether she'll be here Wed-Fri. I am somewhat surprised by this as she's always seemed to have a decent moral compass. If my boss told me I was laid off effective end of week, I wouldn't just not show up the next day. I'd tie up lose ends (maybe not with a smile, but I'd try) and leave gracefully.

I'm now trying to evaluate what the plan should be for compensation at separation. She is CHOOSING not to work when we asked her to finish this time.

Lying around not laying around. Aside from that, the manner in which you chose to tell her was wrong. What do you expect her to do? As stated earlier, you should have told her on Friday so she had time to process. Also, I do not believe the "obscure" language excuse. Sounds like you found a cheaper, illegal for a nanny. You get what you pay for.