Complaint Against Costanza, Italian Family

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Full name Unlock with Membership Known aliases Unlock with Membership Street address    Unlock with Membership City Unlock with Membership State Unlock with Membership Country Unlock with Membership Zip code Unlock with Membership More photos Unlock with Membership Complaint   >> Posted: Oct 05 '06 by Antonella in England, United Kingdom On the 2nd of August 2006 I flew out to Milan to start as an aupair. After 4 weeks I realised that this wasn't for me and that I desperately wanted to come home. I spoke to the family and told them that I was unhappy and really wanted to go home. I gave them 3 weeks notice (even though we had no contract).The parents became really horrible shouting at me telling me I couldn't leave them, that I had achieved nothing, that my family would be disappointed in me and that I was rude and disrespect. All of which I am not. They only then spoke to me when they wanted me to do something and not even looking at me (which I found rude and intimidating). This really upset me as I felt that I had given them enough notice considering that we did not have a contract. After two weeks of this behaviour I decided I would leave a week earlier and go and stay with family (even though they spoke no English and I spoke no italian it had to be better then the way I was being treated with the family). So the night before I was planning on leaving I told the family how I felt and that it was unfair of them to treat me the way they had in the past two weeks because at the end of the day I was still working hard and caring for their children. At 9:30pm the Costanza told me to leave their house I was extremly upset and began to pack my bags, she came into my room and asked me to stay but she had just made it very clear as she shouted at me to get out so I left. I spoke no italian so was difficult for me to communicate with the taxi driver I spent 1 hour on the street then 30min in a taxi before meeting up with my family. It was lucky that I had family there. I don't want other young girls going through what I went through just because I did not want to stay. Please take what happened to me in consideration when looking at this family and make sure you ask for references- that's where I went wrong. Comment   >> Posted: Nov 05 '06 by Costanza in Lombardy, Italy Obviously Antonella omitts some details of the story. The truth is that she is very irresponsible and unprofessional and that she has USED US UP for her summer holidays. In fact she doesn't say how much I stressed the importance of 1yr committment BEFORE I hired her, nor that I had asked her to come over at the beginning of August only because I wanted the family to be fully settled for the half of September when I was going back to full-time work. She stayed with us the whole month of August when we were on holiday at the seaside in beautiful Tuscany, when children were cared for by both parents, and everything was beautiful and easy. She doesn't say that during the month of August she was treated as if she were the daughter of our best friends: we did all we could for her, to make her feel at home and among friends and not employers. We brought her with us to visit Tuscany, to restaurants and theathers and to the Opera as well; I spent my afternoons teaching her Italian; I made her presents (shirts and books).Indeed she had to give in that the job was exactly as I had stated it to be in my emails and the family was nice and generous.... but that was of no use! On the very first day in the city, on the 2nd of Sept., she declared she would go. She simply said that she was homesick (!? the girl is 22!) and being an AP was not what she wanted to do.. I tried to speak her into taking some time. I asked her to try it in the city. Maybe to enrol in an Italian school, to meet the friends I had introduced to her...There was nothing to do. She kept repeating that she would go. I began to look for another AP and when I found one that was able to come for the beginning of Oct. I asked her to stay until then.. there I found out that she already booked her return ticket BEFORE she had leaved UK - without telling me anything !- and that she would go! At that point I was really upset. Additionally I had began full time work and had no (more) time to waste behind her. That is where she says we didn't speak to her... of course !! I was back home 20.00 o'clock in the evening and had no energy to loose with her! After 5 days, one week before she was supposed to go, on a fryday evening at 20.30 she told me that she was leaving the very next morning for good. At that point I really lost my temper. I knew a cousin of her mother was in the city so I told her that I was fed up to be used for her own business and never kept into consideration and that if she had really decided to leave the morning after then she would as well go straight away.... What upsets me most is that she thought this was all a GAME!! She wanted to see what an Italian family was like, attaching no importance to the responsability this involved, nor to the little ones (2&4yrs old) that got used to her and saw her go overnight. She kept repeating (and wrote it too!) that " we had no contract". Well, this is WRONG!. When a family hires a girl as an AP and the girl accepts and goes to the family, there is a LEGALLY BINDING CONTRACT between them - and it is a written contract as well, given that all elements (timing, duties, money to be earned and final consent) are agreed upon by written emails. If the conditions that are stated in the contract are different from what you find than the girl has all rights to go, but if she just "changes her mind" she should at least carry the burden of her decisions and try to help the family out in the best way you can. Especially when the family did help you out as much as she could! In Antonella's case, it would have been just as easy to stay until the next AP came. That was all I asked for. And she denied it . I was just too nice and patient to her! We have had a few AP before her and, hopefully, will have many others in the future. I was always extremely serious about being a host family: what I offer and what I ask is clearly stated in my emails and in my profile on the web. I ask the same seriousness from the girls I welcome home. Antonella was utmost unprofessional, selfish and arrogant.