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[quote=Anonymous]Here's the difference between the surveillance in an office and in a nanny setting:

1) In an office, your supervisor is not the person examining that footage.  In many cases, no one examines it at all unles there is an issue, but when someone does it is security and they are looking to identify a specific issue.  That is very different from parents (with whom nanny is teying to build a rapport), checking in regularly to see how nanny's behavior makes them feel.

2) Parents watch this footage far more frequently and bring it up far more frequently than would be the case in an office setting.  Yes, even though they are at work.  If you have the streaming service it is easy to keep it open in a background window and check in every time you think of your kid.  That is incredibly tempting to new parents who want to feel connected to their baby.  The result is often micromanaging.  "I noticed baby went down for nap at 11:45 instead of 11:30.  We really need to keep her on schedule."  This undermines both the parents' trust in nanny as they begin to feel that she needs constant supervision and instruction and it undermines the nanny's trust in the parents to treat her as a professional and a member of the parenting team rather than a mindless drone.

3) An office is filled with people who choose to work in an office.  A nanny has chosen a career where she doesn't have any adult interaction all day.  It takes a certain personality type to thrive in that environment and yes, many nannies are shy.  So telling them that the parents won't mind seeing them be silly is not the point.  The nanny minds.  If she was comfortable with constant supervision, she would be with a WAH parent.

4) Constant supervision is always a low-level stress for some people, but that matters more in a nanny setting because nannying is emotional labor.  In an office, you don't have to be constantly patient and upbeat and positive.  You can sit around with a grouchy look on your face while you handle many things like emails, research, etc.  Sure there will be meetings and phone calls and conferences where your social skills come into play, but even then your clients aren't sobbing incoherantly or throwing food or barfing on you, and the level of social skills required is "polite and deferential" not "loving you like your mother would were she here."  It is a huge difference.

That said, as a nanny, I am fine with cameras provided parents are up front.  But, as is so often the case, comparing what I do to what office workers do is apples and oranges.[/quote]

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