YSaC, Vol. 397: Childhood is priceless. Childcare, not so much.
need a sitter for 11:00 – $20
sitter fell through earlier and i have to be at work at 12. my friend will be off at 5 and will come get my son right after. my son plays well with other kids. everyone tells me he’s an angel. and if you dont have kids of your own dont bother calling . and if youre a weirdo, you should be scared. i’ll only trust another mother. if you could come get him that woiuld be great, but i’ll make my way to you if theres no other way. and my name is xxxx by the way. thanks xxx xxx xxxx
- You’re offering someone $20 to watch your kid from 11-5 pm. In other words, the price you’re putting on your angel-child’s well-being is $3.33/hr.
- Oh, that’s right, you’re also offering to let a stranger pick your child up and take him away with them.
- I didn’t realize that mother and weirdo were mutually exclusive categories.
- For extra bonus hilarity, you posted this at 9:30 am, and you think you have the ability to be picky.
I didn’t think it would be possible to find a worse offer than that, but of course I did. This one was from kijiji.com:
Childcare needed
Hi, my name is Zxxxxxx, I am looking for a babysitter for my 15 month old daughter. Must be willing to work 10-12 hours and Fridays and Saturdays from 8am-8pm. $20.00 a day. Experience and references perferred. please feel free to call if interested at (xxx) xxx-xxxx. I stay in [location]
You want someone to watch a 15-month old girl for twelve hours at a clip, and you’re going to pay them $20? You do realize that that’s $1.66/hr, right? For childcare at an age when you can’t leave them alone for a second or they’ll be under the sink chugging the Drano?
Or, you could try to find someone who will do it for free, and couch it as a service:
charming grandson seeks grandparents
We are wondering if there are any grandparents (or future grandparents) in [location] longing to spend time doting on our beautiful 7 month old son
For many different reasons grandparents and their grandchildren are not easily accessible to each other these days, so we’re looking for surrogates
A good match for our family would be a couple over 50 who live in [location], who love doing grandparent-ish things, holding him in their lap, stroller walks, picnics, reading books together, showing off photos to their friends, delighting in new teeth, new words, new abilities, generally taking joy and making a fuss the way only a grandparent can!
That’s right, if you need your fix as a grandparent, we’d be happy to loan you our 7 month old son — though we could only do that while we’re at work, of course.
Thanks to Sylvia, Jami from DateWrecks.com, and Valerie for sending these in!
Holy smokes!
this can only end badly, check
unclear on the concept, check
unrealistic expectations, check
…and here I am stressing over who will watch my cat while I’m on vacation.
And let’s not forget…
humanity is doomed.
I pay $17 a day to board my cat. $20 for a child sounds like asking for a major case of “you get what you pay for.”
Yea, I think at $20 a day most _cats_ would be spending the day locked in a crate… Shall we just call child services now and save them the suspense?
I … just … $20 a DAY? Come pick him up?! Show off pictures?! What the fuck are these people smoking?
Oh, wait. Wait a minute. That one kid is “an angel” and the other is “charming.” Now I want the job(s), but there’s probably a line around the block.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard a 7-month-old described as “charming.”
Well, we can’t all be as suave and urbane as Cary Grant.
These people don’t just suck at Craigslist, they suck at BEING HUMAN BEINGS. Jesus Tapdancing Christ. This is funny exactly up until the moment it becomes a front-page tragedy.
I vote for Dan for comment of the day. Not only is he right, but he used the phrase “Jesus Tapdancing Christ.” WIN!
2nd!
3rd!
Hello? Is this the lady with the charming child who plays well with other children? Yes, of course I am a mother; my other children are… uh… tied up at the moment, but I’m sure your son will play very nicely with them. I’ll make sure of that. Oh no, you just get yourself ready for work. I’ll come pick him up in my completely remodeled old-fashioned ice cream truck with the refrigerated section in the back.
What? Oh no; of course I’m not a weirdo! No, I don’t mind your asking. Can’t be too careful these days. See you soon – Byeees!
(heh heh heh)
See, at first glance it seems catastrophically stupid to invite a total stranger to pick up your child. After all, that person could be all “Yes, we’re going to my lovely home in the suburbs” but then take the kid right to her creepy pedophile boyfriend and his video-camera-wielding friend.
But I forgot the protective-forcefield-generating properties of the phrase “if you’re a weirdo, you should be scared.” Clearly, this woman has thought this through thoroughly and carefully. THIS IS A FOOLPROOF PLAN.
p.s. I’m not a weirdo but I’m scared anyway.
Agree on all counts.
Nah, It’s safe. I don’t think sexual deviants and pedophiles spend much time on the internet.
A couple of my friends mom’s are quite grand-baby hungry. I don’t know if they are craiglist desperate though.
Still, quite disturbing.
I think you’ve coined a new phrase to describe a flavor of extreme desperation heretofore unobserved in the human condition prior to the dawn of the Information Age: craigslist desperate.
grandbaby hungry? try them with cocktailsauce! nummies!
Oh, wow… I…. wow. For reals?
Wow, babysitting rates sure have dropped since I was 12, I used to make atleast $8/hour with the occasional tip.
Wow..I used to make 1.50 an hour but that was 30 years ago. Geez, I pay my cleaning lady more than 20 dollars a day and she is only in charge of cleaning my toilet. Unbelievable.
Holy shit. Another Jami. 🙂 Beautiful.
Re: the post, I could not believe my eyes when I saw it. Unreal.
This is appalling. Even your most basic daycare center or Sunday school requires background checks, thumbprint registration with the sheriff’s department, first aid training and often 2- or 4-year early childhood education degrees.
Yes, but that allows them to charge a bit more than $20 per day. That is why so many moms with minimum wage jobs need subsidized child care.
I’ve never had a post amuse and enrage me at the same time before.
Even the “longing to spend time doting on our beautiful 7 month old son” line pissed me off, and not just because it sounds so self-important and deluded. Seriously? You’re actively looking for STRANGERS to take your INFANT? Oh, but it’s okay because they should be OLD right? You’re expecting OLD people, and OLD people can’t POSSIBLY be do anything evil to small children, right?
At least the other two admit that they want dirt-cheap-to-free childcare. These people think that the presence of their “beautiful” child should be enough.
“I’ve got a really ugly kid. Anyone want to hang out with him?”
To be fair, the last ad says nothing about leaving their child alone with said old folks.
Even so, unless you’re watching them like a hawk the whole time they’re there, how long would it take for them to “inappropriately” touch the child (or whisper disturbing things to them, etc.), not to mention the repulsive possibilities available when just “holding the child in their lap”? No?
To be fair, child care rates vary greatly across the country. Actual day care centers where I live charge around $20 per day for up to 8 hours. That may be unheard of in places like NYC or LA but that rate doesn’t really stand out to me as outrageously low. Occasional or one-time sitters definitely get paid more than that. Granted, everything else about the first ad is pretty creepy, but to me screams “I have a no skill, low paying job that I will lose if I can’t figure this out and that might mean being homeless” more than “I’m more than willing to just leave my kid with anyone at any time.”
Why oh why am I putting so much time into defending weird Craigslist postings? Moving on…
“Actual day care centers where I live charge around $20 per day for up to 8 hours.”
But that’s for taking care of a bunch of kids at once, so in actuality the place is making, what, a hundred dollars a day or more. Just sayin’.
I, too , am so relieved that the first poster wanted a mother to take care of her kid because all mothers are reliable, of course. Once you give birth, you naturally become a saint.
As for the second, I’m sure she’d be able to provide references. And if one of them is from her parole officer, what of it?!
The 3rd ad, well… I thought when I found a guy who wanted a daughter for the night, thatwas the ultimate in creepy, but I think the people who want fake random grandparents for their kid also deserve a special place in hell.
Sounds borderline criminal to me, as in endangering the welfare of a child or something to that effect.
I am usually not on board with people that are totally convinced that everyone in the world is trying to abduct their baby.
However, this person is ADVERTISING for people to take her child. She is even throwing in beer money. This hurts my brain.
I LOLed until I realized that all these people have been allowed to spawn.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, here I submit exhibit “A” for state mandated licensing to procreate.
Dear God, we’re doomed.
Craigslist – really? For God’s sakes, if you’re going to find a stranger to watch your kid, you’d be better off going down to the local bar and seeing if you could find someone with time on their hands than going on CL! I mean really, have you SEEN the stuff in the personals, or the rants and raves?!
You are so right. A random, bored, unemployed guy down at the local pub might actually be willing to watch a kid for 6 hours for $20. And there is a 99% chance he is not going to purposefully hurt your child. (there is a not small chance he will accidentally hurt your child but that’s not his fault). Whereas people like that wouldn’t check craigslist for childcare work, legitimate people checking it wouldn’t accept $20, so who does that leave.
The first one is seriously scary. I would not be as careless as that with a pet rock.
I nanny for a 7 mo old girl and make $12/hr…
I cannot even fathom who would accept 20/12 hrs… it really boggles the mind. Especially since when I put my ad on CL I had 6 responses to choose from in one day, good paying jobs are out there!
On top of that, wow, references and experience? good luck because you just ruled out anyone desperate enough to take your offer.
as for the grandparents ad, I wonder how the baby’s REAL grandparents will feel about this!
“Hey mom! yeah, we finally found childcare! This couple comes over and takes care of Tommy, and in return we give them pictures of him and let them claim he’s their grandkid– it’s perfect! … Mom? … You there?”
Maybe their grandparents are on the lam (or they are), or deceased, or really horrid people (to the point where random people slumming CL for children seem like a decent idea (?!? – I don’t think there are enough exclamation points and question marks for that)).
Really, though, my guess is that they’re looking for someone to pay for things for their kid.
sadly i have to agree with Big Country – hopefully this is just someone desperate to keep their job, however, the fact that they are advertising on CL just proves they’re really not worthy of a: a job and b: fertility, in the first place. As for the Grandparent thing, there are alot of people who’s grandparents are in another state or country – but again, would you really advertise on CL for this???
In the first two my though is basically “people that can provide references and past experience won’t do this job for those prices.” Actually, I can’t think of any way that you’d get someone with any experience with kids for that kind of money. You MIGHT be able to find an unlicensed daycare/old-lady-with-an-apartment at that rate, but they don’t go looking for you. And they don’t do 15 month olds.
The grandparent one is pure creepy. Is this some kind of half-assed con? Are they hoping to score money or free swag for their kid?
Yeah, stuff like this is why “Craigslist desperate” is now a phrase, and one I will be using in the future.
I was partly raised by a grandmother-for-hire that my parents found through a newspaper ad. I still consider her my grandma. I don’t think it’s that creepy, really.
But the ones that offer pennies an hour for taking care of an infant for twelve hours at a time – WTF? And saying you “stay” rather than “live” somewhere is hella ghetto. Just sayin’.
I had the same thought about the “I stay at…” comment. Does that mean she is shacking up with some guy from the bar? Squatting in an abandoned building? A homeless shelter?? My imagination went crazy with this one and they weren’t pretty images.
“and if youre a weirdo, you should be scared.”
That phrase struck me as odd. It’s like a veiled threat mixed in.
Is her job being Batman? It would explain the night shift.
is it too soon to make a Michael Jackson joke?
I’m going to say something, as a daycare provider, that may shock some parents….
Spending the day with your little ‘angel’ isn’t enough of a payment.
We need a special form of green paper for that. Or something we can transfer into said paper.
Yes, we do love children. But love for children doesn’t put gas in the tank and food on the table.
If you don’t want to pay us, watch your own kid.
Thank you.
I work in the field of Early Childhood Education. I’d like to say that these postings shock me, but…..sadly…..they don’t. Most parents spend more time shopping for cars, shoes, and houses than child care. It is a widely held belief that anyone can babysit, right?
It’s time for society to realize that 90% of a child’s brain develops before the age of 5. Makes you wonder what’s going to happen to the brains of these children, doesn’t it? Educated caregivers provide one of the best opportunities for a child’s success in life. And that’s going to take more than a “mother” who’s not a “weirdo” willing to work for $3.33 or less an hour!
It’s a Big County – $20 per child per day works out to a $1000 day for a center caring for 50 children. In my state, the ratio for pre-school children is 10 to 1. The going rate is approximately $25 in my rural area so, for those ten children, that room brings in $250 a day. We can keep our rates lower because we operate with larger numbers. If I were going to take care of a single child on a daily basis, I’d ask for at least $10 an hour and that would be a bargain!
I’m a babysitter and I charge 7/hour. And to the people i tell my rates to, that’s considered cheap. I would not do any of these jobs even if i was desparate. And having just payed for college i’m pretty damn close to desparate.
And you are not telling me that there is a mother out there that raised a child from birth that outld agree to watch a child that cheap. Please.
The “Surrogate Grandparents” thing reminds me of the winning entry on an episode of Genius last year were they did the same sort of thing for families torn apart by divorce, so maybe there is a future in this kind of thing.
Then again, probably not.
Ummm….for the second one….when does this “parent” spend any time with their child? This parent works 8am – 8pm….assume baby sleeps from 8pm to 8am…that leaves NOTHING. At this point she needs to just put an ad on CL for someone to keep her baby, it would be cheaper and her baby won’t notice.