When you have an agreement with someone, you expect it will be upheld.
Unfortunately, sometimes the person finds a loophole and expects you to be okay with it. That’s what happened here.
Check out why this babysitter is annoyed with her client and won’t back down.
AITA for refusing to babysit because of $10?
I babysit for my next door neighbor, Ann, who is a single mom.
Last time I was watching her kids, Ann stayed out an hour and a half past her specified return time and wasn’t answering my texts or calls.
Turns out she just got lost in an area without reception.
But the drama was far from over.
The next day she came to my door and handed me an envelope with $47, $10 below our agreed upon “Crisis Pay.”
I noted this and she replied, “What crisis? I wasn’t in an accident or anything, just lost.”
I shut the door and wrote it off as a loss.
Ann texts me that she want to go out on a girls night, and wants to know if I’m free to babysit.
I say that I am, but that she’ll need to pay me the $10 from last time before I agree to do it.
The babysitter wants an ally, but alas…
She says that she won’t do that, and restates her argument that it wasn’t a ‘real crisis’ so I shouldn’t get crisis pay.
She and my mom think I’m being entitled, that I don’t know how hard it is to be a single mom, and that I should suck it up and babysit.
She said she’d find another sitter, I said that’s fine.
So far I’ve stood my ground, but now I’m questioning if my mom might be right? AITA?
Here’s what folks are saying.
The cheapest clients are always the most demanding and most exploitative clients. If you lowball yourself, these people will lowball you even more and refer you to other cheap people. I say this as someone with 12 years of experience freelancing.
Yes. Keep your mom out of your business. Never allow a client to deal with your mom about your business.
If a dalliance wasn’t even worth $10 to her, that’s just sad.
I’m impressed, too! But I doubt it was a boy.
Absolutely. Your mom should value you most of all. How unfortunate.
Clarify what everything means in a written contract, including what classifies as “crisis pay.”
If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.