Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Boiling the Babysitter

A friend of my mine - also a nanny - just yesterday shared with me this little story, a cautionary tale perhaps, and I thought it so perfectly fitting that I just had to share it.  She called it, "Boiling a Frog."  Essentially, it goes like this: If you try to put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will leap out immediately because the water is simply too hot.  However, if you put that same frog in a pot of cool water and gradually increase the temperature, the frog will not notice and will eventually be boiled alive.

Now, why would she share this with me?  Because, it recently happened to her and resulted in her finally putting her foot down and quitting her job.  The mother of the children for whom she sat was the pot of water, slowing increasing in requests and expectations - or one might say, in water temperature - so that, the job that was first described as "looking after the children" slowly, ever so gradually, became a job of "doing the dishes, preparing dinner, picking up around the house, doing the laundry, running errands, changing light bulbs, and anything else that needs to be done that I can think of and don't want to do myself."  And my nanny friend thought that, by performing each task, she was simply being agreeable.  What she now realizes, however, is that with the first little nod, she had willingly jumped into a pot of soon-to-be-boiling water.  When the water began to percolate, she was out of there.

I realize now that she shared this story because she saw in me the frog.  As we swapped nanny horror stories and I described the recent tasks that have been asked of me, from changing the sheets on the master bed to hand washing "the mistress' delicates", she quickly identified the real truth of the issue.  It's not that my employers are really so busy that they can't do these things themselves, or that they present these to me as "Can you do me a quick favor?" but that they want to see just how much they can get away with without having to pay me additionally or hire more help.  Here I just thought that I was "pitching in", while in reality, I am slowly but ever-so-surely being boiled alive.

No comments:

Post a Comment