Nikki’s husband’s little sister charged them $250 to babysit her child even though she’s over the house all the time. She also borrows Nikki’s old books for college, so now Nikki is charging her $300 for the book she needs. Is she being petty or justified? How would you feel if a relative charged you to babysit your child?
Ayla Brown: And good morning to Nikki. Nikki, how are you? Congratulations. I hear that you are kind of a new mom. You have a baby and that means you have a babysitter. What’s going on with the babysitter and the drama there?
Nikki: Yes. Thank you. Yes, I am a new mom. So my husband and we usually have a normal babysitter that we always call. But for this time, she wasn’t available. We decided to ask my husband’s sister to babysit. And she’s always there and she’s always hanging out..
Ayla Brown: Has she ever babysat before? Like, without you guys around? I hear she’s always there, but has she ever been solo alone, babysitting the kids?
Nikki: She’s never babysat our kid, but she does babysit for her side job. She goes to college in the town where I went to school. But the problem is we asked her to do this. And I’m kind of thinking you’re always here. She’s probably just going to do it for free. No, she turns around and says I’m going to charge $250 for the night. And that’s the family discount. Whoa, That’s the discount.
Ayla Brown: So I’m just trying to think we pay. I’m not going to tell you what we pay our babysitter. But yeah, let’s just say hypothetically, it’s $20 an hour. It must have been a really late night for you guys, or she just charges a lot of money. Okay.
Nikki: Yeah, it wasn’t really that late. You know, we don’t stay out that late. So I was flabbergasted.
Ayla Brown: Yeah, You’re like, Wow, what a family discount.
Nikki: So I was like, All right, that’s fine. So then a couple of days later, I realized that she goes to the same school that I went to in college and she is borrowing a book that I used. And those books are not cheap.
Ayla Brown: No, my gosh, they’re not.
Nikki: No, I decided as kind of a little payback. I told her that come the fall semester, if she wanted to borrow those books again, I was going to charge her $300 because that’s what the books cost. Yeah, I think it’s always best.
Ayla Brown: Interesting. You guys are being, sorry, but, you know, that’s a little petty, right? But you’re kind of like, well, if she’s going to charge me the family rate, I’m going to charge her my family rate for books, right?
Nikki: And I guess that’s my question, is that crazy? I don’t know. I think it’s insane that she just charged us in general to babysit. That’s her family that she’s babysitting.
