Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Babysitter 2.0 You Make me Nervous

So it's 2.0 week here at Chez Wo and oh what a Wo it is.

I never did secure a nanny share to cover my 3 day a week childcare gap. I have tried family coverage and a few teen babysitters. Last week our babysitter chose to use our laptop during her off time and didn't she leave a shocking two tabs open on our browser.

1. Some skanky youtube music video had me sneering at p-man's invasion of her privacy. But 2. I snapped to attention when the next tab -- her facebook account -- produced this commentary on my little boy to group members she was writing to from our computer.


Wow. I guess when my gut told me the nuthatch didn't really like her, I should have gone with that. He seems a pretty good judge of character.

And, let me say right now I thank my lucky stars for anonymous commenter from last week and their timely input "your kid's not going to throw sand when s/he's a teenager, it's just an age-specific behaviour, no matter what Grandma [or snarky babysitter] says"

thankyouthankyouthankyou.

****

But what do you think? I never confronted this little bag about the posting. It's not that I feel we invaded her privacy but rather that I would not want to deny another family the possibility of her repeating this dumb choice of not logging her account out if she's the sort to make a habit of posting bitchy callous comments. Do you think it was prying on our part? Tell me do you surf babysitters on facebook? I find most have set up private only profiles but I still try. And, I must confess to a certain access lust outcome of this totally 2.0 experience. Someday my daughter will have a private online space like that and a bit of bizzare time travel made me wish I could call our sitter's parents and make them look at the stuff I had on my computer for that while. I wanted to stay logged in and know what she said the next day or the next. Or maybe today when I fired her but that did seem a bit much to me.

****

On the upside we have now actually listened to some new music

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10 Comments:

Blogger clara said...

good god teenagers are not very bright, are they. get a shot in for me, nuthatch. oh - and happy birthday?

not sure what I would do - probably the same as you. I would want to tell her how dumb she is even though it would just garner a sneering "whatever." everry little kick at the invincibility can is worth it, I think.

6:31 a.m.  
Blogger Sue said...

If she left it open on your computer, you had every right to look at it. I try to keep my blog away from the eyes of Sleepy Town but I always write it with the awareness that someone I don't want reading it will, in fact, be reading it.

Now, I would have confronted her on the issue if for no other reason than to take pleasure in watching her squirm. In fact, she's young and dumb. You could have P-man (imposing lawyer that he is) offer up a veiled threat for a (totally specious) slander suit on behalf of the nuthatch. Ha! The little monster deserves it.

6:50 a.m.  
Blogger nonlineargirl said...

Good riddance. Our neighbors had a nanny who wasn't clicking (no facebook stuff, just personality issues between kid and caregiver) so they got someone new. Now everyone is much happier.

12:47 p.m.  
Blogger Chicky Chicky Baby said...

If you get a bad vibe, listen to it. Go with your gut, that's my motto.

And right now my gut is telling me to eat brownies.

10:53 a.m.  
Blogger Bon said...

in a way, the access is kinda cool...i'm with Mad that if it was open you had every right to look...but sometimes with access comes seeing what we really don't want to.

she sounds like a pretty crummy sitter, and i'm glad you got rid of her.

2:51 p.m.  
Blogger p-man said...

Long in the pants, short in the weiner... sucking my muff like a vacuum cleaner. These are lyrics to be reckoned with. With which to be reckoned. I reckon, with lyrics, I be. Fucking teenagers.

8:25 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

And her spelling is horrible. Atrocious. Is that how you spell atrocious? Does that mean what I think it means? Oh well.

Is there a babysitter version of those sites were you can grade university professors? That would be an invaluable tool.

11:32 p.m.  
Blogger UmassSlytherin said...

lmfaolmfao.
sorry. but it's funny. :)
It just goes to show you that you have to be really careful who you let watch your kids.
Once we were interviewing babysitters and I did a myspace search on all of the candidates: we found the most ridiculous things! One young woman's profile had pictures of her taking bong hits and her headline said, "I like to have sex with gurlz!" (no offense to people who like to have sex with gurlz.)
It was...eye-opening. The internet can be a scary place, too bad these teens don't realize that anything they post is fair game.

I love to blog, but I never put any identifying information on my blog, as it should be. These kids, it's crazy: their picture, their name, where they live the CHILDREN THEY BABYSIT FOR!

To all parents: do a thorough internet search on these people before you hire them.

P.S. Fire her ass, OP. Please. That's disrespectful to your child, not to mention juvenile and mean. She doesn't deserve the job.

7:52 a.m.  
Blogger UmassSlytherin said...

oh, i see you did, good!

7:53 a.m.  
Blogger kittenpie said...

Wow. Good thing she wasn't smart enough to close it down, huh? Some things are nice to know...

1:42 p.m.  

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