‘I called the police on a mum when she didn’t come back for her kids on time’

A babysitter has revealed the drastic measures she took after a parent didn’t come home for hours after the agreed time – ruining the younger woman’s plans for the rest of the day.

Babysitting is a job, much like any other and you expect to be treated fairly by your employer – working your agreed hours and being paid on time.

But one woman claims she’s had trouble with one family as the mother keeps messing her around.

In a post on Reddit’s Am I The A**hole forum, the unnamed babysitter, 28, told how she babysits on weekends to earn extra money and there’s one mum she wants to stop working for, but the kids are cute and it’s “easy money”.

However, the parent never comes home at the agreed time and the young woman always ends up staying late to look after the kids, meaning she loses her spare weekend time.

The babysitter, thought to be from the US, explained: “She used to not give me return times but finally, I started asking as it made it impossible to get anything done on the weekends. I’d go babysit so she could go to ‘brunch’ but she’d be gone from 11 AM to 7 PM. My whole day was gone.

“After that, she’d start giving me times but never stick to them. She wouldn’t even call to tell me, she’d just stay out.”

She claims this happened again on Saturday, when she agreed to look after the kids from 6pm until 9pm as she had plans in the evening to go out with friends.

But when 9pm rolled around, the mum was no where to be found – and she didn’t answer any calls or texts.

At the end of her tether with the mother, the babysitter tells how she decided to take drastic action.

“I was even getting ready at their house after I put the kids to bed. She promised. Of course, 9:00 rolls around and she’s not home,” she wrote.

“I call her, no response. Text, no response. Another hour. Nothing. Still calling and texting. Finally, it is midnight.

“By this point, my plans are long ruined but I’m p***ed and exhausted. I call her and leave a voicemail saying if she’s not home in the next hour, I’m considering the kids abandoned and calling the cops. I also text her this.

“I try calling her 30 minutes later and it goes to voicemail on the second ring, I text her again and she leaves me on read. If she had reached out saying ‘Hey, I’m staying out until x time’, I would’ve stayed. I don’t know any of her family nor the father of the kids so I can’t call them.

“I gave her a grace period of 15 minutes and tried calling again, finally called the cops (non-emergency line). They showed up and I showed our agreement in text from earlier in the week confirming that she’d be home by 9. They try contacting her, didn’t answer. I was dismissed and they took the children to the police station. I go home and go to bed.”

The woman claims she was woken up at 3am by a frantic phone call from the mum asking where she and the kids are.

“I tell her I followed through on my threat, check the police station. She cursed me out, I hung up and went to bed,” she continues.

“The next day, she sends me an essay saying the kids’ father was called and there’s a DCF investigation launched against her. She called me every name under the sun but I didn’t think I was wrong until I spoke to a friend with kids. She said I should’ve just waited it out and refuse to ever sit for her again.

“She asked if her potentially losing her kids was worth me being petty.”

The babysitter asked fellow Reddit users to tell her if she was in the wrong or not and more than 3,700 people responded to share their thoughts.

One person wrote: “Not the a**hole. One thing I’ve learned from True Crime is the wait 24 hours to file a missing person thing is a myth. She wasn’t where she said she’d be when she said and wasn’t responding to any communication. She was in fact a missing person at that point.”

Another replied: “The investigation also probably has to do with her literally ignoring multiple calls and texts. If instead of just the time it had been a serious incident she made herself as that only emergency contact unreachable.”

A third said: “She was 6, SIX hours late and not responding. That’s an are-you-dead-in-a-ditch type situation.”

“She was out of contact for over six hours. What if something had happened to her kids like they needed the emergency room? Her actions have repeatedly shown how little regard she shows for their care, and how little respect she has for you. As the client, she holds a responsibility to at least be contactable, especially once the agreed finishing time for your services has passed. I bet she never even offered to pay for the impromptu overtime she was making you do,” stated a different user.

Someone else added: “Let’s be honest. She wasn’t being petty. She reported a bad mother! This was not the first time this woman did this and she would continue doing to whoever watched her kids because she is selfish and doesn’t care. Too bad choices have consequences. Maybe she will learn but doubt it.”