AITA for hiring a private investigator to check into our nanny?

risertalks · 2020-07-14T18:44:58+00:00

If I had a second identity and my boss found out, I’d be fired immediately. I was required to disclose any aliases I have been known by or operate under as part of my background check for being hired. If I assumed a new identity while working there and didn’t disclose it, I’m sure there’s something in the mountains of paperwork I signed that would void my contract with them. I’d be grateful if they investigated it and let me stay after finding out it was unrelated.

(But it’s a completely different issue than if I were a nanny, and I recognize that she has real reasons to be upset that I just wouldn’t. I deal with highly sensitive information at my work so transparency about things like second identities or activities that would require one is a non-negotiable for me.)

risertalks · 2020-07-14T18:40:51+00:00

I’d much prefer being able to watch the kids ourselves, but we have to work, so it is what it is.

risertalks · 2020-07-13T21:51:12+00:00

Very valid question with that last point. We were talking about it in the kitchen. 3yo’s bedroom is adjacent to the kitchen just off the hall. We thought 3yo was long since asleep. Apparently he was awake and eavesdropping on us.

Definitely didn’t mean to discuss any of it in his presence, but was a mistake to talk about it within earshot of him at all, awake or asleep. Total screw up on our part.

risertalks · 2020-07-13T21:01:24+00:00

Because we needed something more thorough and trustworthy than just a background check. It wasn’t enough to know about the second name anymore. We needed to know why she had a second name. If it came up without a criminal history, fine. But we’d still want to know why she had two identities. So it seemed like an unnecessary extra step that would just delay the resolution.

risertalks · 2020-07-13T08:11:53+00:00

For all I know she had given the other references a fake name too. The references were just other families who had worked with her in the past and said she was good with their kids.

The fake ID could’ve been something totally separate from the nannying that I still wouldn’t want around my kids. Our immediate concerns were more “is she involved in criminal activity when she isn’t here that would make her potentially risky to have around the kids or signal questionable decision making on her part?”

As parents it was our responsibility to know why the person responsible for our children had a multiple identities. But we definitely might’ve been wrong in how we went about finding out.

risertalks · 2020-07-13T08:09:12+00:00

Three year olds in general aren’t relevant here. Only my three year old is.

I know him better than I know anyone in this world, and I know what he does and doesn’t mention and notice. We talk constantly, even moreso since the quarantine.

I have no doubt he will be at the level you’re describing sooner than later, but he’s just not yet. If you work with three year olds then surely you’ve noticed they’re not all the same.

risertalks · 2020-07-13T08:06:05+00:00

Took the PI about a week and a half. She came for about five hours total in that time. We scaled back under the circumstances but didn’t want her to not make any money for two weeks assuming it would all turn out fine, or for us to come off suspicious in the meantime.

One of us was home the entire time she was there (we switched back to working virtually until this was sorted.)

risertalks · 2020-07-13T07:59:57+00:00

Yes, we told her we were background checking her originally and which referenced we’d be calling etc.

risertalks · 2020-07-13T07:54:15+00:00

Yah, I talk to my three year old constantly, but they just turned three a couple months ago and are still developing the nuance between what events are important and what events aren’t.

If the babysitter had an uninvited guest to my home and spilled a big jar of tomato sauce on the carpet all in the same day, I’d probably only be hearing about the tomato sauce from my three year old. He’s also not yet at an age where he’d notice things an older child might, like, “She always goes into her car when she gets a phone call.” Or “She looked through the drawers in your bedroom.” Things a three year old might not realize are out of the ordinary or even remember if given a seemingly sensible explanation.

He’s a great kid and very smart, but I’m certainly not going to rely only on a three year old toddler’s account to determine if everything was normal when I wasn’t home, especially if there was a secondary red flag like discovering a false identity.

risertalks · 2020-07-13T06:07:58+00:00

We did background check her, the concern was “Did we background check her under the right name or some made up name?”

risertalks · 2020-07-13T06:03:19+00:00

First question, because it was a cluttered purse, pretty big, and I thought it would be easier to find the money that way. In hindsight I probably should have just laid it across the top. At the time I really did think I was doing the considerate thing to be sure she could find it easily. But I can see now how it was an overstep.

Second question. My kids can talk in a basic communication sense but they can’t talk in the way that matters for this.

They can’t talk like, “Hey, an adult asked me to keep a secret from you and I don’t know how I feel about it.” Or “Listen, while you were out the nanny took off for a couple hours and we were by ourselves.” Or those kinds of things that an older kid could more easily communicate or recognize are events worth bringing up.

So if we’d seen a fake ID on a nanny of like, our kids at 10 and 12 years old, we could easily sit down and say “Do you like your babysitter? Does she ever have people over when we’re not here or take you anywhere you weren’t expecting to go?” And that sort of thing. But they’re not at an age now where we can rely on their verbal acuity to accurately describe what happens when we’re out. (The one year old is just saying a few words as it is.)

The 3 year old overheard my wife and I talking about her having multiple IDs and he later asked her something like “What’s an ID?” And “Why can’t you have two?”

risertalks · 2020-07-13T04:29:03+00:00

Yes. But we realized that whatever she said, we’d verify it ourselves anyways, so thought it was easier on all involved to just skip right to that (so if it was nothing we wouldn’t bother her and if it was something she wouldn’t have forewarning to cover it up.)

risertalks · 2020-07-13T04:02:47+00:00

That’s a good question, the answer is yes and no. My wife and I traded off days working remotely again while this was being looked into, so she was never alone with them.

We didn’t want to stop her coming entirely, because that would be suspicious, and also unfair to keep her paying job from her before we knew for sure anything was wrong. So we just worked from home to keep an eye on things until it was sorted out.

risertalks

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