Reply to Nanny not efficient - how can I talk with her about this or just let it go?

Forum Index » Employer Issues

Reply to "Nanny not efficient - how can I talk with her about this or just let it go?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]We hired a new nanny about a month ago, I think she is really wonderful, but I'm a little disappointed in how inefficient she is with baby-related tasks.  For example, her start time is over 30 minutes before my daughter wakes up and during that time, she is supposed to get two meals ready and packed up (DD eats these meals outside the home).  They are simple meals requiring very little preparation on her part, such as today's:

Meal 1: chicken strips, 1 yogurt cup, half an apple
Meal 2: infant cereal (the powder kind), steamed broccoli, 2 fish sticks

The chicken strips & yogurt were already prepped and in their containers so the only things she needed to do were: peel & chop apple; measure out cereal; steam broccoli; stick fish sticks in toaster oven.  Everything gets put in its own container, then everything including water & milk thermoses & utensils put in lunch bag.  In the 20 minutes the fish sticks are cooking, I would get all of this done easily, plus do some clean-up.  Today, it took her over a half hour, or about 45 minutes after her start time.  At the end of her work day, she has an hour to do baby-related cleaning during which I watch the baby.  I've asked that at a minimum, she clean up DD's dishes and treat stains (not a full washing) on DD's clothes from the day and she will do just that, but with an hour, she has plenty of time to get to other things, but she won't.

I think it boils down to two things: 1) she doesn't think being efficient and keeping time are really important.  She lives a 10 minutes' walk from us, but regularly arrives 5 minutes late.  She takes DD to music class late (literally a 5 minute walk from us) and when she recounts their day to me, I'll often hear things like, oh I gave her dinner late because our play date ran over.  I've told her being on time is important to me, but I know some people are just not programmed to keep time.  2) I get the sense she doesn't take ownership of the baby-related cleaning.  She does what I ask her to (i.e., clean baby dishes & treat stains), but won't look around to see what else she can get to.  I don't think I should have to ask her to do something that is obvious (e.g., fold & put away baby laundry that is hanging from the drying rack).

What's even more frustrating is that she asked for a minimum # of hours and so I gave her the extra 1.5 hours/day to do the baby cooking & cleaning.  I often find myself at the beginning of the day doing some of the cooking for her so DD and she aren't late to class or whatever and at the end of the day doing the cleaning that I feel she had time to get to.  I really like how this nanny engages DD, so would like to keep her.  I would really appreciate some advice on how and what to communicate to her so that she does a better job with her ancillary baby-related duties.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics