My Neighbor Refused to Pay My 73-Year-Old Mother for Babysitting, Saying She Was ‘Just Sitting at Home Anyway’ – So I Stepped In

“Well,” she said, “this has actually been a good learning experience for you.”

My mom blinked.

“A learning experience?”

“At your age,” Claire continued, still typing, “you really shouldn’t be taking jobs without contracts. That’s just common sense.”

Then she looked up and dared to smile! “Besides, it’s not like you had anything better to do.

You were just sitting at home, anyway.”

My mom didn’t argue.

Instead, she came home that evening, sat at the kitchen table, and opened her notebook.

I was washing dishes and could hear the scratch of her pen. I saw her cross out the four weeks of expected pay, one line at a time.

Then she closed the book and said softly, “I should have planned better.”

That’s when she filled me in on everything.

That’s when I felt something cold settle in my chest. That kind of shame shouldn’t belong to a woman who worked her entire life, raised three kids, paid off a mortgage on her own, and still offered to babysit out of kindness.

Claire thought she was clever.

She thought she could manipulate a soft-spoken older woman and walk away with a month of free child care. She thought being polite meant being weak.

She was wrong.

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