Forgot to pay ?

[Anonymous]

Mb married last month and asked me to go with her to her hometown for the wedding. She never mentioned payment. I took care of my charge 24/7 for five days . She paid for the plane ticket. When she was on her honeymoon I took the 2 kids to my house for the weekend and she justed thanked me but no payment at all.
Now she is interviewing for jobs out of state but leaves her 3 year old with me 24/7 For 3 or 4 days and I just get my regular pay
She s leaving next week again and I don't know how to bring this up cause I really need the money . I do love so deeply to my boy but as I say I need some payment.....
Any thoughts?

[Anonymous]

Forgot to tell she gave me 2 sick days off and she is nice with me ...respectful and very friendly

[Anonymous]

Sounds like since you worked all those days for free it's just expected now. She won't pay you unless you bring it up.

[Anonymous]

I'm a MB. The more you do for free, the more she will come to expect it and take it for granted. If you have not said anything, she probably thinks that you're ok with this, especially if when she says 'thank you' you just say 'no problem' etc.

If you need this job and don't want to rock the boat too much, you could just forget about what has happened so far in terms of payment but try to establish that you need to be paid going forward, e.g. "I really appreciate you including me in your wedding plans and was happy to help you out with looking after lovely little X & Y at the time and that you got to have a nice honeymoon. I am happy to continue to help you out while you are going out of town, but I just want to let you know that in the past whenever I have worked more than my regular hours I get paid some kind of overtime.' I think that is the absolute minimum you should say. If she is respectful and friendly, then you ought to be able to say more, i.e. be more clear about needing to be paid for your time, and have her understand. I would imagine that if you are having the kids to your house you are even paying for their food etc out of your own pocket, so you should be getting expenses of some kind too.

To be honest, though, she doesn't truly sound respectful ... maybe just manipulative?

[Anonymous]

I would bring it up, going forward at least - she should have paid you for your past work but it's a little difficult to ask for back pay. As she prepares for her upcoming trip, say "I've been happy to help out but I realize we haven't really discussed overtime pay and perhaps we should have. Usually, my overnight rate is X and my overtime rate is Y, so for the whole weekend I'd expect to get Z% in addition to my regular weekly rate."

I have a regular person who watches my child in the week and when she does extra weekend hours for us, I ask her what she thinks would be reasonable and she's hesistant to name her price - it's not easy to guess being on the other side of the equation either. I give her a higher rate for weekend work + a tip/bonus and she seems happy with it, but I'd feel better if she just told me what she wanted. Don't be afraid to speak up!

[Anonymous]

Your fault for being a door mat, you must act like an adult and demand to be paid per hour you work, or look for another job and set some boundaries. Be professional and you will be treated so.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for helping . Time to speak up!