Once more unto the breech

We have a new au pair starting on Sunday. As you may recall, the last one just up and disappeared on us essentially saying it wasn't what she expected. A number of interviews later and, to cut a long story short, we've a 20 year old Italian lass coming to live with us on Sunday. Which is good, since we're kind of at the breaking point on being able to get work done.

It's been 3 weeks since the last au pair left. We started the search for someone new. Of the lot, three really stood out. The first was a charming male au pair from UK (a maux pair?). After a Skype interview we made an offer, but he turned us down – in the end, he needed more money than an au pair job could pay. The promise of free accommodation doesn't help if you already live with your parents.

Another potential looked good until the end of the call. Well, first off she'd not be able to stay the entire time we needed, but we could have lived with that id the rest was good. But then she ended the call with Oh, can I bring a friend?

She dodged all the questions of Who? and Can you give us a CV or some details of who this person is that you want to live rent free in our house and have access to all our stuff?
All the while she found it odd that we'd object, like we wouldn't find it at the limits of our space living with three adults in this flat, and having a fourth couldn't possibly make any difference.

There we other potentials, but the one we settled on was already in London doing a class. She'd be available for 6 weeks when the class ended, but she was happy to come over for lunch to meet us all. It went well. Much better than her Skype call (which wasn't the best connection anyway).

So this whole time since the last au pair left, the nursery – now the au pair's room – has sat empty and unused. Which is a bit of a pain since we're short on space as it is in our house. but it felt like giving up if we started putting stuff in it again. It will be nice to get it used again and not feel wasted. I'm still hoping that at some point we start to see some benefit of having an au pair, and it'll take some the burden off and let us get some work done.

In summary – less terrified than last time, but more cynical.

Well *that* was disappointing

I'm still a bit shocked at how badly that au pair worked out.

When I last posted here, I mentioned we'd just hired a 24 year old austrian girl to look after our daughter while we get work done. She started last sunday, and on Monday, after a weekend visiting friends in Brighton, she declared she'd quit and was packed up and gone in under half an hour.

All this a day before my daughter's second birthday, which just adds to the awkward

Here's the story as far as I can tell…

This was our first time doing anything of this sort, so we went into it with a few reservations. We didn't want to leave the au pair alone with the girl until we knew we could trust her. So the first few days had her looking after the girl in the house (nicely coinciding with some well-needed rain), where we'd be on hand, but working, in case we were needed, or with L going with the au pair and the girl to one of the many nearby parks, partly to show the au pair around, and partly to see how she'd treat the girl outside of the house.

By the 3rd day we felt comfortable enough for her to take the girl for walks alone. We seemed to get along well, I even cooked with her, and it all felt quite comfortable. In her off time, we'd share meals together and spend time with her to make her comfortable with us and in her new home.

The only problem I'd had with her is when she was supposed to join me at a park. Due to a confusion with bus stop names she foudn herself in the wrong park and ended up not being able to meet up with me before I left. Admittedly, she did try calling, but the local (o2) networking was dropping our calls, and the one which could have gotten through I ignored because it arrived at the same time as the girl face planting off a swing into a patch of mud (causing me to try to comfort her and find out of she was hurt or just messy and find somewhere toy clean her up (air dryers in a loo don't help clean up messes)). All in all, it's a pretty minor problem to have, but she did end up missing an entire morning's work.

On Friday, day 5, we asked her to join us for a friend's birthday lunch. After which she'd head off to her friends in Brighton for the weekend. She was supposed to come back Sunday night for dinner with us, and work again on Monday. I cut short lunch, skipping the pub part, to head home and get some work done. That was pretty much the last time I saw the her, or at least the her I thought I knew.

On Sunday we exchanged a few text messaged which amounted to just this:

Are you joining us for dinner

No, I'll be back Monday at noon

Eh? We kinda need you here for morning

I won't be able to make it before then, I'll explain later

We were a bit annoyed at that, but we assumed she was having a life complication and it'd just be a bump we'd get past.

Monday noon comes and goes with not a sign or peep for the au pair. In the end we declare the day a waste and start to consider if we dock her wages or ask her to work on the weekend. I finally give up waiting and decide to pack up the girl and get out to the shops to buy some food for the girl's birthday lunch the next day. As I'm waking out the au pair comes in, bringing a friend of hers with. I'm a bit dubious about the stranger in my house, but, as the place is her home too, I couldn't complain. So I just say Hi. I'm off to the shops. I'll see you in a bit. L is upstairs. To be honest, after her being so rude to just show up hours late like that, I didn't want to talk to her.

I get the next bus out and 3 minutes later I get a call from L saying the au pair has just quit. I'm shocked. I get off the bus and get the first bus back home. When I get there, the au pair is in her room, with her friend, behind the closed door. L is working in the office and just tells me that the au pair had said that she was working far more hours than she was willing to do, and she would quit immediately and move out. The friend she brought was there for support, but as far as L could tell, was just there to be rude to us.

L brings me up to date for a few minutes then I go to talk to the now ex au pair. I catch her just as she's leaving, and bring up the fact that we had a contract and she could not just walk away with no notice. To cut an unpleasant interaction short, I'll suffice to say voices were raised and doors were slammed and that's it she was gone. She never even said goodbye (or anything for that matter) to the girl before she left.

The whole thing left me feeling just betrayed. I mean, I felt I could trust her and she goes and throws this in our face. I'm still puzzled about her claim she was working 12 hour days. Unless she counted time spent conversing or eating together as work, or the time she spent exploring the neighbourhood as work… I can't see how she's arrived at anything like that figure. A number of her final complaints, like how we were working from home, we told her about in her Skype interview. She never complained once about anything the entire week she was working. One of her references warned me about her taking on too much work and letting it get to her. Turns out, that was spot on, but I didn't expect it to come to a head so quickly.

It come across as her quietly seething against us the whole time, which doesn't strike me as true, since she did honestly seem to be having fun with us.

The only thing which seems to fit all the evidence I see is that when she visited her friends, they just talked about the parts she didn't like which spiralled out of control. Kind of like how when you explain the problems you have in a relationship to someone who doesn't know your partner they just quip Leave his sorry arse without knowing anything really about the situation. And given how rude the friend who came with her came across, this seems credible. So after a couple of days of egging her into it, she's turned the whole thing in her own mind into to a lost cause.

It's all supposition regardless. It doesn't really matter.

Anyways, this all means we're back at square zero. Desperately trying to find another au pair or childcare solution and still get the work done we need. All in all, over that one week we got maybe 3 hours of work in the same room the whole week and we generally wasted that on catching up on stuff that accrued while getting the house ready for the au pair. And now we have the added bonus of the girl asking where the au pair is. We've had houseguests before, so we're hoping the girl treats it like that and not anything traumatic. So we just explain that she went home and is not coming back. L and I try to not mention the au pair's name to avoid reminding the girl, though she still says go home on random occasions which we think is a reference to the au pair.