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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We need to renegotiate our nanny contract in the next 4 months or so.  Right now our nanny gets 2 weeks paid vacation, one of those at our election and one at hers.  She gets all federal holidays paid.  We guarantee her 40 hours a week, but frequently come in slightly under that.
When we interviewed her she told us she didn't ever get sick, and so we didn't include any sick days.
This is not working.  I think we have a lot of tension around sick days.  She actually does get sick a fair amount, and she also doesn't take very good care of herself.  She seems fairly unaware of her own medical conditions and how to manage them.  (e.g.  she told me that she had a stomach flu but she would be better soon b/c she was taking lots of 'tylenol flu' medicine.)
She has had 3 sick days in the last 6 months where she was too sick to work, we did pay her for these.
I have a separate office over the garage, where I work about 1/2 the days.   When I am working in that office, I will frequently do things like go pick up my daughter from preschool over my lunch break b/c I enjoy doing that.  
Unfortunately, I think this leads our nanny to view me as not really working.  She came up to my office a couple weeks ago after dropping the kids at school and said that she was really really sick to her stomach.   I said- are you trying to tell me that you cannot work the rest of the day?  Because if that is what you are saying, I need to know that.  I cannot pick up from preschool today and school later, so if you are too sick to work I need to call my husband and have him come home. 
She kind of sighed and said she didn't want me to call him. (what she wanted me to do was to go get the kids and finish early- but I had appointments blocked throughout the afternoon and couldn't.)  I then texted her later in the day to see how she was feeling.  She said she was fine, that she realized she actually hadn't eaten anything that day and she felt much better after eating.

About a kindeness?

That is not an abnormal interaction.  
I'm not really sure what to do.  I'm hesitant to add sick days because I think she would use them all for things like I outlined above, and then would not have any when she is in fact too sick to work.  But it also doesn't work to be in this limbo land.
FWIW, she used all of her vacation for the year in the first 4 months of employment.[/quote][/quote]

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