“They’ve Practically Abandoned Me With Their Kid”: Parents Hire A Stranger To Babysit, Then Ignore Her Messages For Hours

When you work as a babysitter, two of the best qualities that your customers can have is honesty and communication. When you all know for a fact that you’re on the same page, everything runs smoothly. However, if you’re looking after the kids while their parents are changing the rules of your agreement or completely ignoring you, then it’s a disaster just waiting to happen.

Redditor u/poopfupa went viral on the r/mildlyinfuriating subreddit after sharing a babysitting story gone wrong. She explained how the kid’s parents were late coming back home and ignored her attempts to communicate. Not only that, there was the question of money, too… Scroll down for the full story.

Bored Panda reached out to u/poopfupa via Reddit, and we’ll update the article once we hear back from her.

Babysitting can be a nightmare if the parents don’t live up to their promises

Image credits: Liza Summer (not the actual photo)

A woman turned to the internet for advice when she realized that the parents of the kid she was looking after were ignoring her

Image credits: poopfupa

Image credits: Joseph Gonzalez (not the actual photo)

Here’s how some people reacted to the situation. Some shared tips, others made jokes

The author of the post later gave a couple of updates on what happened

The author of the post found herself in quite a pickle. The kid’s parents were running very late. She was pressed for time. It’s not like she could just leave the child without supervision. And the couple completely ignored the message she sent them, trying to verify when they were coming back home.

But the cherry on top? The fact that the couple underpaid the babysitter by $13 once they finally came back home, drunk, two and a half hours late. All in all, it wasn’t a great night for the redditor. However, her story got a ton of attention online. At the time of writing, her post already had over 87.3k upvotes.

Reactions were mixed. Of course, there were plenty of people who completely sided with the OP. Some of them shared their own powerful personal stories about babysitting gone wrong.

Not all internet users were impressed, however. Some accused redditor u/poopfupa of making things up for attention online. Others thought that the OP may have overreacted.

It’s hard to know how to react in situations like these. Probably the best approach is that everyone’s on the same page before the parents leave. ‘Kidsit’ suggests finding out what time they plan to be home, whether there’s a chance that they’ll be late, and what the absolute latest time they might come back will be. The latter is important because that’s when you can officially start to worry and can reach out to the emergency contacts they left behind, if need be.

All in all, try to be as specific as you can about all the details. If the parents are answering your questions with general statements like, “We won’t be late,” try to diplomatically press them for a concrete time. And if they do end up running late, don’t be scared to give them a call. You are working a job after all. The parents expect you to show up on time; and you should expect them to honor their side of the deal.