Cousin does some baby/pet/house sitting on the side for some extra cash. However her social and dating life is picking up, yet she doesn’t want to give up these gigs.
She has a solution, but I think it is very douchey. She wants to hire a “sub” behind the house/pet/child owner’s backs. And she actually found someone to fill in for her (and pay them 25% of what she makes), this person recently moved into this country and does not know any better.
While I think this is a tad clever, I don’t think it is ethical at all. And I bet there has to be some kind of law against this. It just doesn’t seem right. She thinks it is okay because her sub has previous experience doing sitting work when she lived in Nicaragua. I’m not even sure if I believe that.
Well, I am trying to keep her out of trouble, but nothing I say is changing her mind so far. What are some arguments that I should use in this case?
Aw, hells no! <----says a mom and former nanny/babysitter.
Unless she’s presented herself as an employer or manager and has the requisite insurance for her employees, I’d be really, really pissed off if she tried to pull this off on me.
And, how does she propose to make this work? Is she going to show up, take charge of the kids and have her “sub” relieve her once the parents are gone? Does she not think the kids are going to say something at some point? 'Cause I have to tell you, they will, at some point, mention to Mommy that the babysitter isn’t the same babysitter once Mommy goes out.
I think that’s your best bet, argument wise. She’s going to get caught, and she’s going to lose clients, and she may even go to jail for neglect or abandonment of those kids. Not to mention how the feds are going to be real interested in the tax and citizenship status of the person she’s “subcontracting” with.
She doesn’t seem that interested in “right”, so you’ll have to use greed and fear, instead.
If belongings cannot be found (whether they’ve been stolen or simply lost by the owner) she coudl be suspected of having stolen them. If something happens to the pets/babies/houses (fire, burglary, injury, death) it could fall on her.
If you hire a subcontractor, you are civilly liable for that subcontractor’s screwups.
The people who hired her as a sitter did so because they trust her, not the sub. It is betraying their trust unless she makes her subcontracting clear. Also, if it’s found out (and that’s very likely eventually) then her reputation as a sitter could be ruined.
Hey, that sounds like a great idea. I should offer myself as a housesitting “sub”, empty the place out, and when the original sitter who hired me rats turns me in to the police, I’ll say I have no idea who she is and what she’s talking about. After all, other than the word of self-confessed liar, there’s nothing at all to link me to the house I robbed. It’s the perfect crime!
This is a very stupid thing to do. If she doesn’t understand that, then normal logic won’t work. You have to scare her.
Tell her that she can go to jail if she doesn’t handle the taxes properly. At a minimum she’ll have to file a 1099 for any money she pays the sub.
Tell her that if the sub were to steal everything in the house, your sister would be the one to go to jail. Everyone thinks your sister is house sitting, so when the owners come back to an empty house, she will take all the blame. The sub can deny everything.
Why doesn’t she start a club for babysitters? They can all nominate which days they want to sit and no one will have to work when they don’t want to. They can put a percentage of their earnings into the club treasury, and eat candy bars in Claudia’s bedroom while they have meetings. It sounds like super keen fun!
This is not like watching somebody’s parked car to prevent damage. The cousin is responsible for what happens, but watching kids has a much higher level of personal responsibility. For me, the trust issue is most important. Her plan is deceitful. If her word means nothing, she is nothing. Simple as that.
She is also taking unfair advantage of the sub and that won’t last. The sub might sub. The sub’s sub might have boyfriends and a party. This whole thing gets out of hand and it all starts by lying in the first place.
PS. People who use sitters don’t live in a vacuum. They can know what is going on in the world and check up on a sitter. Wouldn’t you? They could do it personally or have cameras installed in the house. If violating the trust and personal morality are not important to the cousin, maybe the simple fact of being caught would be a deterrent. She will get caught.
She had to pay me in the end, for the damage and replacement value of the stuff that got stolen. AFAIK, she never got the money back from the sub, plus she’d paid him and then never got paid by me.
Even if there had been no theft or damage I wouldn’t have paid her. Her contract was to look after my home, not to give unsupervised access to others.
Assuming this is just house sitting. (If it’s pet or child sitting she’s clinically insane) she is just begging to get sued by an unhappy homeowner. It’s not the least bit “clever”, it’s utterly retarded. There are so many ways this could go wrong. So many.
Exactly. Sooner or later she’ll get busted for this and she will lose those clients - people checked her out and hired her, not some unknown person. If she’s bonded, I don’t even know what the repercussions of this would be.
How to convince her not to do it? I don’t think there’s a way. She’ll do it, it will blow up in her face, and you’ll be able to point and laugh.
An anonymous letter, saying no more than they ought to specify, “she, and only she, can be on the property”. Sign it, “Just a tip from a friend!”
It’s hardly damning in any way, to her, she gets a chance to say, “Garsh, I’d never even think of such a thing!” But there is no more gray area for subs and hijinks.
The sub she hires might in turn hire her own sub, for 25% of what the cousin is paying her. And the sub’s sub might then hire a sub, and so forth. Eventually, the cousin would come back and find no one watching the kids except a hatrack with a bucket on top.
