I think it’s generally a good rule of thumb to treat people you hire like human beings. That seems like a basic thing to ask, but it apparently isn’t so basic. As the saying goes, “Common sense is not so common.” Common decency isn’t so common, either.

I’ve read nightmarish nanny stories of nannies who were offered food by their employers only if it was expired or unwanted by the families. I’ve heard of nannies who were told they were not allowed to use the family’s microwave because their food smelled and would stink up their house. It’s really sad what some employers do with their nannies — basically treat them as though they are lesser human beings who deserve no kindness or respect.

One of the things our nanny said to me she was looking for when choosing her next family was “respect.” I was a bit caught off guard when she said that during the interview, as I wasn’t expecting to hear that, but it makes sense when I think of all the stupid stories above. A few days a week, I prepare a fruit bowl for her of fruit that I peel and cut up, and she initially had this look of shock on her face when I offered it. I mean.. I was already cutting and prepping fruit for myself, so it’s not much more work for me to do it for her. This morning, I offered to prepare her a cup of tea, and once again, she had this look of surprise on her face that I was doing this one thing for her. Preparing a cup of tea is simple: all I’m doing is putting a bag into a cup and filling it with hot water, but she was just so appreciative and thanked me multiple times when I handed it to her. It made me realize that she probably wasn’t treated that well by some of her past employers, and the thought just made me feel sorry for her.

I am not blind to the fact that we live in a classist society. The US is a country that likes to pretend it has no classes, or that everyone is “middle class,” but that frankly is just not the case. The people with big paychecks pay people with smaller paychecks to do to the work that they don’t want to do, or perhaps cannot do. The paycheck of the CEO of my company is likely at least 6-10 times what I get paid. He may look at my paycheck and think it’s pocket change. But the size of your paycheck is relative: I have a larger paycheck than my nanny, but then otherwise, how would I pay her…? But living in a classist society is not an excuse to treat other people like shit or as though they are lesser than you. Your worth as a human being should not be tied to the employment choice you make or the size of your paycheck.

It’s been an interesting week with our new nanny. Of course, it was rough the first two days when our baby was still getting acquainted with and used to her. It was brutal for me to sit in the second bedroom with my headphones on, just one wall separating me from my crying, screaming baby with a new nanny just trying to do her job and calm her down. Regardless of what call or what recording I was listening to, I could always hear her screaming, and it really broke my heart and made me feel like a terrible mom. I would occasionally come out of the room to try to comfort her, and while it would work, I didn’t want to get into the habit of doing it too much because I didn’t want to undermine the nanny or make the nanny think I didn’t trust her. These things just take time, as the fourth and fifth days have been going really well so far.

Our nanny certainly has opinions, though, and ways of doing things with other families that we just don’t want to do. For example, I will have Kaia wear the same onesie to sleep and the same outfit two days in a row assuming that they aren’t dirty or wet. Kaia is a baby, so she doesn’t have body odor the way adults do, so why bother changing the clothes if they aren’t dirty?

The nanny noticed I laid out the same pants for the baby to wear that she undressed her from the previous day, and she asked, “Aren’t these the same pants she wore yesterday?” I said they were, and there was no point in washing them if they were still clean.

“They aren’t clean, though; she wore them yesterday,” the nanny insisted.

“Did you have her roll around in dirt or grass at the park yesterday?” I asked her. “The pants look and smell clean. She doesn’t get body odor like adults do, so she’s fine.”

“She’s a baby, though! Babies are dirty!”

I told her that unless the baby was all over the playground or in mud, she wasn’t dirty, and adults were far dirtier because we actually smell and sweat. “Okayyyyyy, you’re the mom!” the nanny said, shrugging her shoulders in an exaggerated manner and putting the pants on the baby.

At the end of the first day with us, she asked if I wanted to have her empty the diaper pail every day. I told her that whenever it looked full, she could empty it.

“Most moms I’ve worked with ask that the diaper pail be emptied daily,” she said, looking confused.

I told her I didn’t think that was necessary given the whole point of having a diaper pail was to contain the smell of poop/pee, and if we emptied the pail every single day, that would create far more waste of garbage bags and be worse for the environment than necessary. And none of us would really benefit from that given what I said originally about smell.

She also wanted to have the baby use a new bib for each feeding. At that rate of use, we’d have to cycle through all her bibs every 2-3 days, which seemed ridiculous. If the bib only had a little spit up or could just be rung out, I wanted her to reuse the bibs. She gave me this look as though I just smeared baby poop all over her face.

Fridays are baby laundry days now, so when I told the nanny not to put the washed clothes in the dryer and instead to lay them out around the dining room table (yes, we’re hobos), she asked why we didn’t have a drying rack to hang the clothes on. I told her it just felt like unnecessary additional clutter, and given she was only going to be a baby for a finite amount of time, we’d just air dry the clothes up until the point we would add them to the dryer once she got bigger. She gave me some side eye and complied.

She is probably going home to her husband and telling him that her new nanny family is cheap and dirty. Well, that’s all right by me. We’re still getting used to each other. Things are going well given it’s now day 5, so we just need to get through the initial 2-week hump, and then we’ll be acclimated to one another.

On Monday when the nanny started, she seemed a bit warmer than she was when she did the trial. During the trial day, she seemed a bit formal and stiff, almost on edge probably given she knew I was evaluating her and watching closely. She hadn’t really given us any information in regards to what snacks she’d like to have in the apartment, so I told her we had lots of mangoes, and I heard (from one of her reference families) that she enjoyed mangoes. She smiled and said she noticed all the mangoes in our fruit bowls and was wondering where we got them from.

“But I have to tell you something…. you don’t know how to pick mangoes,” she said, with a somewhat mischievous, cheeky smile on her face.

Did she seriously just insult me and accuse me of not understanding mangoes… ON HER FIRST DAY? What does she know about how I choose the mangoes? She didn’t even look at them up close!

She explained that she grew up in Jamaica, so she always had many varieties of mangoes growing up, especially fresh ones picked super ripe off the tree. She said here, it didn’t matter if they were red, green, or yellow, that she knew how to choose the ones that were picked ripe vs. not ripe, and the ones picked ripe were always the best.

Okay, that’s a bit ridiculous and presumptuous for a couple reasons: 1) mangoes don’t grow in the U.S. other than in Florida, and I don’t really care for Florida mangoes. 2) the majority of mangoes in the U.S. are imported from Mexico, and when you are crossing borders with fruit, especially fruit as delicate as mangoes, it’s pretty much impossible to pick the fruit ripe and transport them long distances without destroying them or having them go rotten. As a result of this, mangoes need to be picked green and unripe and then ripen off the tree. That’s sad, but it’s just a fact of living here and eating them. 3) There is just no way in hell she is getting mangoes picked ripe off any tree anywhere in the northeast of the United States no matter what she tries to tell me. She may have grown up in the tropics with mango trees galore, but I understand food transport and what is real vs. fantasy.

“You do realize that the majority of mangoes in the U.S. come from Mexico, right?” I asked her pointedly. I told her that the yellow Ataulfo mangoes were generally the safest bet here. She disagreed, but hey, we’re all entitled to our own opinions.

We’re still getting into a groove. She tends to get a little defensive when I give suggestions or try to correct her, but well, this was always going to happen regardless of how good she was because I’m working from home and will see her interacting with my child, and well, I AM this child’s mother, so I know how she behaves generally and what she likes and doesn’t like. Overall, she seems a bit timid and like she is still coming out of a shell, but her opinionated side comes out at odd times like it did with the mango scenario. Hopefully she’s just quirky and things will smooth themselves out over time… Because I really do not want to have to search for another nanny.