A Babysitter’s Rant Goes Viral After Parents Who Hired Her So They Could Attend a Wedding Don’t Come Home Until 5:30 A.M.

Hiring a babysitter so you can attend a wedding is pretty basic—most parents do it. Most moms and dads also come back as planned, pay their sitter, and send them on their merry way. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened to one woman, who recently took to Reddit’s “Am I an A------?” subreddit to recount a very eventful (and stressful!) night. According to her post, which was first reported on by People and has been upvoted over 6,000 times, she was contacted by two parents, who tasked her with caring for the 13-week-old son and two-year-old daughter while they attended the wedding. They told her they’d be home by 11 p.m.—but ultimately didn’t walk back through the door until 5:30 a.m. the following morning.

A lot unfolded while they were away, but the early portion of the evening—the job began at 5 p.m.—was relatively easy. “I put them to bed by 7:30 p.m. and started putting the house back together,” she wrote. “At 10:15 p.m., I got a text from the parents asking if I could stay until 12 p.m., and I told them that’s fine and to have fun.” The clock struck midnight, and they still hadn’t returned, which is when the babysitter started to get a little worried. “I sent a text asking if they’re close and didn’t get a response,” she continued. “I can be pretty anxious, so my mind started thinking they got into an accident or something bad happened.”

She started pulling up nearby accident reports as her calls continued to go unanswered—and by 2 a.m., she had “called around 15 times and received no answer from either parent," the poster continued. Three hours later, just as dawn broke, she called the police to inform them that the parents were missing. “I told them I couldn’t keep [the kids] after having them all night," she recalled. “The police showed up at 5:22 a.m. and took a statement from me.”

The sitter remained with the kids at the request of the officers on the scene—and finally, just after after 5:30 a.m., the parents pulled up in the driveway, frightened to find police cars parked out front (they thought something had happened to one of their kids). “The mom ran into the house, thinking something had happened, and sighed when she saw they were there,” she shared. “‘Our phones died, and we didn’t know how to get home from the venue,’ is what she said to me, and I was fuming!”

She said her piece, demanded to be paid right then and there, and left the house—but it didn’t end there. A few days later, the parents sent her a long text, telling her that she hadn’t done her job and that she never should have involved the authorities; according to the duo, she should have knocked on a neighbor’s door or tried their emergency contacts, instead. “Emergency contacts are the mom’s parents who are a [six] hour plane ride away, their pediatrician’s office, and 911,” she wrote. “I felt like 911 would be best in this case.”

The sitter, asking for Reddit’s opinion on whether or not she should have handled the situation differently, was immediately met with support. In the post’s 1,000 comments, almost every responder took her side. The most upvoted comment affirmed her actions: “You actually did the right and safest thing.” Another commenter called the parents’ story into question. “Both of their phones died and they spent six hours trying to find their way home?” they wrote. Speculation about what really happened that night (most leaned towards the parents having a few drinks and grabbing a hotel to catch up on some sleep) varied, but almost everyone’s key takeaway was the same—that was the first and last time that babysitter would ever babysit for the duo.