You people think that it’s a good idea to conspire with a minor child against her mother who is doing nothing illegal? This is a minor child who is easily pushed around by said mother and will probably not be able to keep the secret. Are you nuts? That is just begging for trouble.
Sorry I hit submit too soon and forgot to add the most important part.
MIND YOUR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS.
“Conspire”? Where do you get that? Not going out of your way to tell your employee’s mother how much you pay her is not “conspiring” against the mother.
The employer would be simply offering to raise the employee’s pay (which certainly is her business), and offering to keep the pay raise confidential if the employee prefers it. The fact that the employee is legally a minor doesn’t make that a “conspiracy” against her parents.
If the mother finds out about the extra pay and thinks she needs to cause trouble about it, the employer can just say “Sorry, but Heather chose to take her extra pay in clothing purchases (or to have it put in a bank account, or whatever). It’s Heather who works for me, not you, and she’s the one who gets to decide how she wants her money and who she wants to tell about it and how she wants to spend it. If you want to insist that Heather should tell you every detail about her finances, that’s something that you and Heather need to work out for yourselves.”
How is it somehow a “conspiracy” just because a teenager, who btw is mature enough to look after two young children full-time and single-handed, is offered a pay raise with the option of confidentiality by her respectable, trustworthy employer? That reaction is ridiculously overblown and paranoid.
Conspire means to plan in secret. How is that not conspiring?
The parent of the baby sitter expects her child to do something and you would be trying to go around the parental authority because you disagree with how the parent is running her household. That is completely inappropriate and asking for trouble if the parent finds out. It could easily cause problems for the baby sitter.
Most of all, and this was supposed to be my main point, it’s none of your fucking business and you should keep your nose out of it.
More than I got, sitting, even adjusted for inflation.
How old is this kid?
How old is this kid?
Clarify, please. Are you demanding that the rest of the Dopers keep our noses out of it (the OP’s [self-described as “lame”] rant), or that the OP keep her nose out of the babysitter’s financial dealings with her mother?
Before you respond, it’s worth noting that personal problems at home, if not dealt with, can adversely affect an employee’s ability to perform her job effectively. That is something that is WishIHadACoolName’s concern.
Sorry, but the babysitter’s parent has no “parental authority” what-so-fucking-ever over how much you offer to pay your employee and what (legal) form you offer to make the payment in.
If a parent “expects” her child to do something, then she needs to exercise her parental authority on the child. If the parent expects her child to hand over all her wages to help with the rent, or if the parent expects her child always to be totally candid about what her wages are, then that’s a disciplinary issue between the parent and the child. But the parent has no business expecting the employer to help enforce the parent’s authority on issues like that.
If the parent is worried that the employer might not be properly subservient to all the parent’s notions of what the child should be expected to do, then the parent is free to forbid the child to work for that employer. That’s it. The parent has no right to expect the employer to comply with whatever paranoid fears she may have about being “conspired against”.
If it’s the employee’s choice to tell her mother everything about her finances and/or to give her mother complete control over them, then I absolutely agree with you. Families are entitled to make their own decisions about how they handle their money, and if they’re happy with what they decide then the employer should mind her own business.
But if that’s not the case, then the employer’s responsibility is to the employee, not the parent. If the parent allows the employee to go out to work and make her own negotiations about wages and working conditions, then the employer isn’t separately required to clear all the decisions with the parent first. Hell’s bells, even when I hire a twelve-year-old kid who comes around after a blizzard with a shovel to clear the snow off the walks for a few bucks, I hand the money to the kid—I don’t walk him/her back to his/her house and demand to pay the parent instead.
You don’t control the agreements your child makes independently with an employer. You only control what your child is or is not allowed to do. If you don’t want to run the risk of your child having any money you don’t know about, then don’t let your child go out to work.
Obviously the OP and the mother.
Yep. It’s a concern. The OP can find a new babysitter if problems at home cause a problem at the job. The OP should not involve himself in trying to correct the mother’s behavior.
FFS. You can pay the child whatever you want. The babysitter can tell mom whatever she wants. You shouldn’t tell the child ways in which to trick their parent and if you do you certainly shouldn’t be involved.
Get it? It’s one thing to say, “You do such a good job that I’m going to give you a raise.” The kid can then do what she wants with it. It’s something else to say, “I don’t like the way your Mom treats you (based solely on what you told me.) Let’s make a deal. I will give you secret extra money but don’t tell your parent, who you live with and who supports you with housing and food, about it.”
Why? For one, it’s none of your fucking business. In addition, you only have one side of the story. Also, if the Mom finds out, and she probably will, it will cause worse problems for the kid and you will likely lose a good babysitter.
Nobody’s suggesting that she should. “Trying to correct the mother’s behavior” would be something like calling the mother up and lecturing her about taking her daughter’s pay. Of course CoolName shouldn’t do any such thing.
But offering the babysitter a raise without clearing it with the mother beforehand is perfectly legitimate. If the babysitter chooses to tell her mother about it or to give her money the extra money, she can. If she doesn’t, it’s not the employer’s responsibility to do so.
Now you are changing your story, Kimstu.
Here is what you said before:
What you wrote before crosses the line. What you most recently said doesn’t.
If the kid’s complaining about it to you, then she’s making it your business. If you think it’s fair to pay her something extra and if you think she can be trusted to handle money that her mother doesn’t know about, then I see no reason not to offer her some.
Like I said, if you don’t want your kid to have money you might not know about, then don’t let your kid go out to work. If you’re letting your child help support herself, and even help support the rest of the family, by making employment arrangements with other people, then it is your responsibility to ensure that your child is obeying your rules about money, whatever they are.
No fair expecting your child’s employer to treat your child as a responsible, trustworthy individual, and then demanding that she enforce all your parental rules even against her own judgement. If your child is not mature enough to take responsibility for her own decisions about money and privacy, then she is not mature enough to be working as an independent employee. Especially not in charge of other people’s children.
Then let me make it completely explicit what I’m suggesting, so you won’t be confused. I think the employer should say something like “From now on I’ll pay you $x more per week. And if you want to keep the raise confidential, or to have me put the money in an account for you to own later instead of taking it all in cash, I’m happy to do that.”
And then the employer should abide by what the employee chooses to do about both the financial and privacy issues.
I haven’t even addressed the mother’s behavior, which if true, is deplorable. It’s irrelevant to my point. I can’t agree with you that it’s ok to help a kid deceive her parent especially when you’re the one coming up with the scheme.
Give it up Kimstu, there is no point in argueing with person whose vocabulary includes “Fucking” as an adverb, a verb, and any other part of speech seeming too ambitious to reach for a more approppriate word.
I just took a nap and had a realization:
How do we know that mom really didn’t need that money? The OP makes a lot of assumptions about Mom’s current status, that may not be 100% what’s going on.
Maybe- for whatever reason- Mom had a bad month and simply wasn’t able to cover things. Maybe mom BORROWED that money from Heather and maybe Heather left that part out.
Within my groups of friends, it has never been uncommon for a parent having a bad month to borrow some money from the working kid (my friends being the kids)- and this has been this case since we were all about 15.
Of course, this is all hypothetical and full of maybes- but also: why are we all assuming Heather is an angel? Let’s say she’s 15-- is it uncommon for 15 year olds to be manipulative and try to get sympathy? C’mon.
I just don’t think it’s fair that we are coming down on Mom, when we don’t know what’s going on there. Maybe a family member got sick and it made Mom come up short on the rent. Maybe her car broke down. So forth and so on.
Actually, there is no point in arguing with someone who is incapable of addressing any of the points that I made. Care to try?
Damn. I am hitting submit too soon all over the place today. My apologies.
In addition, I did not use fucking as a verb or as an adverb. I used it as an intensifier which is not only grammatically correct but totally appropriate for this forum.
My daughter, who’s 14, and I went down to Orlando to volunteer at at Give Kids the World, a community for kids with terminal illnesses. The trip cost $500 per person. I asked my daughter come up with $200 of her own money, which she did by babysitting. One mother was flabbergasted that I would ask my daughter to pay for such a thing.
Unbeknownst to her, the plan was always to take the money and put it in my daughter’s car fund. We used the trip as a vehicle to teach her how to save for something important and to teach her that mom and dad aren’t just going to hand over cash whenever she wanted to do something, no matter how notable the cause. I didn’t tell this to the busybody, however, as I neither sought nor required her approval as to how I raise my children.
For all you know, Heather’s mom is socking her money away so that she doesn’t blow it on junk, as young children are want to do. Besides, I know teenagers who babysit all summer for their siblings, for free, because the parents can’t afford a sitter. They somehow survive their childhood and so will Heather.
In short: myob.