Picture this: you’re babysitting two small children, and their parents don’t return home by the agreed upon time. You reach out to them several times, but don’t hear back.
It’s the middle of the night so your options are limited. What do you do?
A 23-year-old babysitter was recently faced with this dilemma, and how she responded left her wondering “Am I the a**hole?”
The 23-year-old presented her situation in the popular Am I the A**hole subreddit hoping to figure out if she did the right thing.
They explained how they were hired to watch a 13-week-old and a two-year-old from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. while the children’s parents attended a wedding. The Redditor wasn’t concerned because it wasn’t their first time watching either child.
The evening went smoothly and around 10:15 the parents texted asking if they could stay an extra hour.
“I told them that’s fine and to have fun,” the sitter wrote.
But shortly after midnight things took a turn.
“12:15 rolls around, and I haven’t heard from the parents. I sent a text asking if they’re close and didn’t get a response. I can be pretty anxious, so my mind started thinking they got into an accident or something bad happened. I didn’t hear from them after 5 minutes and then decided to call, but got no answer.”
Soon it was 1:00 a.m., and the baby woke for a feeding. The sitter went to the city’s Twitter pages to check if there had been any recent accidents, but didn’t see anything.
Within the next hour the babysitter “called around 15 times and received no answer from either parent.” Although they wanted to call the police, they didn’t want the children to be woken up at 2 a.m., so they continued to wait.
However, by 5 a.m. they decided it was time to call the police and report the parents missing.
“I told them I couldn’t keep them after having them all night. The police showed up at 5:22 a.m. and took a statement from me.”
The responding officers asked the babysitter if they could stay with the children while they figured out how to proceed.
About 30 minutes after the police showed up, the children’s parents return home.
“At f***ing 5:48am, they roll up and are greeted by the police. The mom ran into the house, thinking something had,” the babysitter wrote.
The parents claimed their phones died and they didn’t know how to get home from the venue.
“I called them irresponsible and the sh*ttiest parents I’ve ever worked for. I demanded she pay me on the spot, and I left. I got a super long message about how this is my job and I’m a huge a**hole for disrespecting them and calling the police. She felt like I could’ve left them with the neighbors or called the emergency contacts, not the police.”
The babysitter added the emergency contacts she was given were the mother’s parents who live a six-hour plane ride away, the children’s pediatrician’s office, and 911.
Was the babysitter in the wrong for calling the police? Let us know your thoughts.
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