I’m Hiding Chick-fil-A in My Own Fridge Because Our Nanny Keeps Eating Our Food. Am I Being Ridiculous?”
My wife and I have a nanny who comes Mondays and Wednesdays to take care of our daughter. According to my wife, she’s very nice, does well with our daughter, and otherwise we really don’t have any issues with her.
But there’s one thing that has been increasingly bothering me: she regularly helps herself to food in our fridge/freezer without asking.
And I don’t mean grabbing a bottle of water, some fruit, coffee, etc. A few examples:
She opened a brand-new container of Trader Joe’s chicken noodle soup and made it for herself.
Another day, she ate all of our leftover pasta...which sounds ridiculous to complain about, except I had specifically been looking forward to eating it for dinner after work.
Today I happened to check the cameras and watched her go through our freezer, pick out a box of food that had never been opened, open it, and make it for herself.
It has gotten to the point where I recently had leftover Chick-fil-A in the fridge that I wanted for later and actually hid it because I was worried she might eat it. As I was doing it, I thought, “This is insane. Why am I hiding food in my own house?”
I brought it up to my wife, and her perspective is basically: “We never explicitly told her she couldn’t eat our food.”
My reaction is almost the opposite: why would someone assume they can? If I were working in someone else’s home, I would never open an unopened package of their food or eat their leftovers unless they specifically told me to help myself.
For context, I fully admit that I can be territorial about my belongings, so I’m trying to figure out whether this is one of those situations where my personal hang-up is making something seem like a bigger deal than it is.
I’m not looking to fire her over some chicken noodle soup. 😂 I’m more curious about the social norm here, especially from parents who employ nannies or nannies themselves.
Is “help yourself to whatever is in the kitchen” generally assumed when someone is working in your home all day? Or is the normal assumption that you bring your own food unless the family specifically tells you otherwise?
Because apparently I have reached the stage of my life where I’m hiding Chick-fil-A in my own refrigerator, and I need to know whether I’m the weird one.
