She Stopped Babysitting For Her Friend For Free, Because She Feels Taken Advantage of
This 27-year-old woman and her friend, also 27, have been friends for the last eight or 9 years.
Her friend has a 1-year-old son, and unfortunately, the father doesn’t do much of the childrearing, so her friend has had to ask other people for help.
She was raised by a single mother, so she understands how difficult that can be. In the beginning, she was happy to help out her friend when she needed it.
Roughly five to seven nights per month (about once or twice a week), she babysits her friend’s son.
“She doesn’t pay me or give me anything for babysitting, nor do I expect her to. At first, I didn’t mind, but now I’m starting to feel like she’s taking me for granted, and I’m no longer her friend but a free babysitter,” she said.
Last Friday, her friend celebrated her son’s first birthday, and her friend asked her to bake a cake for the party.
“I love baking, and I love her son, so I made a beautiful buttercream cake from scratch, which took hours,” she explained.
“When I arrived at the party, she barely mentioned the cake and just grabbed it and put it on the table. She didn’t mention that I made the cake at all, despite some of our mutual friends gushing over the cake.”
Then, one of their mutual friends told her that her friend claimed she’d “‘drank all her wine'” while she was babysitting her son the previous week.
Dusko – stock.adobe.com- illustrative purposes only, not the actual people
In actuality, when her friend returned to her home, she offered her some wine, and she had two glasses, and her friend was drinking as well.
When she learned this, she was furious. It was astounding to her that she had been babysitting her friend’s son every week for months on end, without pay, and her friend hardly ever seemed appreciative, and now her friend is apparently gossiping about her and lying about her alcohol consumption while she babysits.
Moving forward, she planned to only help her friend when she truly wanted to, and not every single time her friend needed someone to watch her son. She didn’t want to keep bending over backward when all of her time wasn’t acknowledged.
“On Sunday, she texts me, essentially telling me that another mutual friend said I’d be okay to babysit her son on Monday so she can attend the work gala, ” she shared.
“This was also when she finally thanked me for the cake. I told her that I wasn’t able to babysit, and she asked me what was going on that evening, which honestly just annoyed me more because why does your free babysitter need to justify why they can’t babysit when you barely give me 24 hours’ notice?”
Since she usually does provide a reason for why she isn’t able to babysit, she wondered if that was why her friend asked.
In response, she told her friend the truth: that she didn’t want to babysit, and she’d already watched her son twice that week. Her friend liked the message but didn’t say anything.
Now, she feels guilty that she said she didn’t want to babysit because her friend won’t be able to attend the work gala unless she hires and pays another babysitter.
But more than anything, she doesn’t want to be taken for granted anymore. While she doesn’t think her friend needs to be groveling at her feet, she just wants a simple thank you for all the time she dedicates to babysitting her son for no pay.
After the conversation with her friend, she asked her mother and some friends to weigh in. They all agreed that it was ridiculous how much her friend was taking advantage of her, but some of her friends said that they thought she should have told her friend more in advance that she didn’t want to babysit.
In their view, it wasn’t fair to only give her friend one day’s notice to try to scramble to find a different babysitter before a work event.
Do you think she was right to refuse to babysit her friend’s son?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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