When you are good at business, you look at things a particular and objective way.

It’s about the true cost of time and also about productivity.

But not everyone appreciates that way of thinking.

Check out how the parents reacted in this story.

AITA for saying my babysitting rates are $35 an hour?

I’m a software engineer, with a full time job and a side hustle of doing freelance coding work in my own time.

I’ve always been the type to have a side hustle I put a lot of my free time into; I get really bored sitting idle.

My freelance hourly rates are $60 an hour and at my full time job, my hourly pay works out to about $40 an hour.

So that’s how I value my time.

But others didn’t value her time that way.

Anyway, over Christmas vacation, I was staying at my parents house.

My cousin was also staying over with her three young kids from Christmas to new year’s.

I’d been planning on doing some work on my freelance projects when I had free time; in the mornings when my family had no plans.

I wasn’t in any rush; I was already ahead of schedule on them all, but I didn’t really have anything else to do.

It was in a really rural area and it’s like an hour drive to the nearest anything

Then my cousin and her husband asked if I could babysit all day for three days, so they could visit some friends in the area and hang out with just adults.

I said I had planned on doing freelance work at the library, and she offered to pay me to babysit.

I said I could if they got close to my freelance rates.

She wanted a number, and although my freelance rates are $60, I didn’t feel like that was right. It was high.

But I didn’t want to go too low because babysitting 3 kids would be harder for me than the routine coding work I had for my freelance project.

I don’t know a lot about kids and I’ve never babysat for long, and I had a feeling it would be stressful and difficult.

So I said $35, which is below what I make hourly at work, and what is the bare minimum I’d value my time for, if that time is spent doing difficult work.

And she went crazy at me, saying that’s a ridiculous rate for babysitting, that I was entitled and being selfish, that I’m trying to take advantage of her for lacking other options, etc.

Then someone else joined the insult parade.

I said that’s way below what I’d be making if I had the time to do my own work, and I’d be putting off my own work to babysit.

Her husband then got mad at me saying that I was a 24 year old girl, that I’m nearly a child myself, that my time is not worth that much and it’s childish to say that it was and that I was a stupid girl for not knowing that babysitting costs like 15 an hour and that when I grew up and have kids of my own I will see how stupid I was being.

I was kind of done with being called stupid, so I just told them I hoped they could find someone else.

My mom thinks that I asked for something offensive, and my cousin and her husband obviously did too.

AITA for giving that number?

Here is what people are saying.

They didn’t value her time at all and they proved it.

Good question. They’re mad their kid had the audacity to value her time.

THIS! They’re just mad you have self-respect and they never did.

Well said. They could have said no. The insults are a tell.

And they could have respectfully declined instead of insulting and yelling at her.

What a delightful family.

Not.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.