A teenage babysitter on Reddit is refusing to sit for her single-mom neighbor’s two kids after the client stiffed her a promised $10.
The 16-year-old babysitter has been babysitting for a single mom who lives next door and has two children, ages 7 and 9. The babysitter makes $8.50 per hours to watch the two kids. The mom also agreed to pay the sitter an extra $10 as “crisis pay” in case the sitter ever has to call an emergency number.
In her Reddit post, the teen claimed that while babysitting one night, the mom did not return home by the agreed-upon time, and the sitter couldn’t reach the woman on her cell phone.
Worried, she called one of the emergency contacts — the mom’s sister — who came over to stay with the children while the teen went home. “Well, as it turns out, [the mom] had driven into the countryside (with no reception) to stargaze and got lost,” the teen revealed.
When the mom came by the following day to pay the teenager, she noticed her pay was short the promised $10 “crisis pay” stipend. When asked about the “crisis pay,” the mom responded, “What crisis? I wasn’t in an accident or anything, just lost,” and refused to give her the additional funds.
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The interaction miffed the babysitter, who ultimately wrote off the loss and decided to not babysit for her again.
When the mom reached out recently for a sitter so she could go out for a girls’ night, the teen told her she was free to babysit but would need to square up on the $10 she was still owed. The mom refused, reiterating that it wasn’t a “real crisis.”
When the babysitter asked her mom what she should do, her own mom called her “entitled” for expecting the extra $10. Now, she’s wondering if her mom “might be right” or if she was correct to “stand her ground.”
In the comments section, Reddit users backed the teen’s refusal to babysit unless she gets paid up.
“You provided a service with agreed-upon clauses, and you used said clause, and she’s trying to weasel out of paying you back [because] she doesn’t consider your time valuable. I personally wouldn’t babysit for her again [because] she WILL try to manipulate you again,” one user wrote.
“Just because it wasn’t a crisis for her, it absolutely was for [you]. They didn’t know she wasn’t in an emergency, and the stress associated with sorting out the situation was very real,” someone else commented.
“You have the right to refuse to offer your paid services to anyone. Additionally, that counts as a definite crisis; the kid’s mom was nowhere to be found. Also, it’s not your responsibility to be Captain Save a Single Mom,” another user shared.