Carolina A.

Carolina worked for us in 2020 (Jan through mid Dec). She was able to come up with lots of activities for the kids and speak Spanish to them, which is the main reason we wanted to hire her. She was always on time. She did extra tasks such as light cleaning and kids laundry when time allowed it. She wasn't very flexible when it came to working half days, weekends, or driving the kids around though as she thought it wasn't worth to spend gas (even though she agreed to it during our interviews). We wouldn't have minded paying extra for gas but her overall reaction made us uncomfortable asking her for those kind of tasks. She would have a hard time following instructions as well. Often times, when we asked her to change the way she was doing things, she'd get defensive. One day, for instance, I asked her to not use our expensive cristal cup that we got as a wedding gift to kill a bee. She kept on catching up the bee with it and said "It's ok. If I break it, I'll pay for it". Another day I asked her to have our kid do his homework before playing outside but she said she had already told him to play really quick and then do the homework so she didn't end up doing it. (I had to stop working and sit down with him myself). The last week she worked with us, she asked us to pay her one day in advance. We did and gave her a Christmas bonus on top of that. The day after xmas she told us she couldn't come back anymore because she had covid. We were surprised she didn't tell us as soon as she supposedly tested positive as, according to her, she started showing symptoms just a few days after the last time she worked for us. We asked her to give us more details and/or something I could show at work so we could determine if we needed to be tested and/or quatantined but she wasn't willing to work with us, which tell us she was either lying (asking for advance pay knowing she wasn't coming back) or she wasn't taking covid guidelines seriously. It is unfortunate as we kept her hours for the entire year to not affect her income, in spite of the fact that we didn't need a nanny anymore since I was working from home. We also allowed her to bring her daughter to work, covered all her/their meals, paid her for some holidays, gave presents to her and her daughter, and even allowed her to bring her dog to work for a while. It seems like, once I wrote a recommendation letter for her (only highlighting the positive aspects), she completely changed her work ethic.