The Not So Super Nannies

I so wanted Mary Poppins to float down from the sky and land on my doorstep. An irresistible job offer meant I would be returning to the workforce sooner than I’d hoped to leave my ten-week old.

While pregnant last summer, I channeled my childcare angst trying to get a plan in place. Efforts to find (or get into) a high quality daycare facility proved impossible for the area of Los Angeles where I live.

By default, I would have to hire a nanny. Enlisting three agencies in my two-week mad quest, I interviewed dozens of nannies while my mom agreed to fly in from Texas to help transition the top candidate. I narrowed my choice to Juana, after trying her out for a few days.

Prepared to hire her, I asked if she wanted me to pick up anything at the grocery store. I had a bag of pretzels or something in mind, not a grocery list of: Sanka coffee, white bread, frozen waffles, Lucky Charms, it went on. With an 8:30 a.m. start time, you’d think she could pop her own waffle in the toaster at home.

Only when I was ready to hire her did the agency run a background check. (Surprisingly, candidates aren’t prescreened.) Juana had a DUI from just a few months prior. The owner of the agency tried to sugar coat it, “She was very forthcoming with us. She told us right from the start.”

They hadn’t bothered to tell me from the start. It wasn’t like this happened ten years ago in her youthful twenties. My son really liked her and I was half tempted to get the Sanka from her grocery list if it meant keeping her off the booze. Then my good sense kicked in.

My pediatrician suggested an agency in the Valley that snobbishly said a nanny at just $10/hour (the max I figured I could pay) would be tough to find. They sent one candidate, Lucia. My job started in two days. The agency billed her as “a go-getter with a degree in psychology from El Salvador who had continued to improve herself through early childhood education classes. She cooked, cleaned, and was especially great with babies.”

Lucia made a decent first impression, though much of the schooling proved to be fabricated. She’d raised three children herself with the older two in college. She was “a bit full of herself,” my mom assessed. I left her with my son as a first day’s trial. I phoned my mother from the road who said my never fussy son “cried so hard he started coughing.” Lucia played it down when I got home, unaware my mom had filled me in.

“It wasn’t as bad” the second day, my mom reported. Not exactly comforting words. The apartment was reeking of Pine-sol and Lucia had whipped up a decent potato salad. I was torn. Did my son really not like her or was he just feeling the cumulative effect of all these strangers parading in and out? The agency said she was one of their favorites. Ignoring my gut, I hired her.

Just two weeks before Christmas, I was uncertain the protocol for holiday pay. Lucia always filtered what she wanted to tell me through stories about her teenage son.

“So Hector asked to me, ‘Mom we going to have a good Christmas?’ And I say to him, ‘I don’t know. Miss Katie, she not have work for me for two weeks, so no Knottsberry Farm this year.’ He also want a Kobe jersey, hundred fifty dollar.”

It was a story intended to garner sympathy, but only infuriated me. My son was getting socks and bibs for Christmas thanks to his expensive nanny.

I was in a long-term freelance job that didn’t pay for my two-week break. The nanny agency insisted it would be appropriate to pay Lucia for one week, which I reluctantly did, adding some holiday treats for her family. Lucia looked at the $500 bonus, obviously deflated, got into her Pathfinder (a newer year model than my own car) and drove home without so much as a thank-you.

When she returned after the holidays, my son whimpered as if to say, “I thought we got rid of her.” Lucia’s attitude took a detour south. I’d come home and find her watching TV while my son was awake. She’d act rude at times or to the other extreme and muster up The Lucia Show, feigning interest in playing with my son. He wasn’t buying it, tuning her out. My bullshit detector had gone off one too many times.

NannyBug to the Rescue:

I didn’t have a nanny cam so I did the next best thing. I bugged the place. I left an eighteen-hour audio recorder running. I’d already planned to let her go that night; I wanted to confirm my suspicions but also cover myself if anything weird happened during the dismissal.

I handed her a check that evening, leaving it at, “This isn’t a fit.” What I heard that night on the voice recorder made me feel like the worst mother in the world to have left my son with this woman. I could only stomach the first four hours.

While I’m within earshot, The Lucia Show broadcasted her reading over the top to my son.