On “Mad Men,” Don Draper asks his secretary to come with him on a business trip to California — he goes to meetings while she takes care of his three kids. (AMC)
“I’m just another item on this staffer’s to-do list!” muses Baby Frankie, as he mulls life in an in-box. (Caitlin Thorne Hersey)
Dara Pettinelli says she made herself available “24/7” for baby-sitting when she worked as an editorial assistant at a magazine. (Jonathan Baskin)
Leslie Venokur with her 2-year-old daughter, Sami. (Tamara Beckwith)
It was 5:30 on a Friday afternoon and the vice president of marketing needed a baby-sitter in less than one hour.
“She was screaming that she had tickets to the opera, but her baby-sitter just canceled,” says Maria, a 25 year-old marketing associate for a major fashion label who asked that her real name not be used, as she still works for the company.
“The vice president opened the door and said, ‘I can’t believe I have to ask you this, but what are you doing tonight?’ ” Maria recalls.
The Upper West Sider, who baby-sits on the side for two other New York families (a well-known fact among her co-workers), already had plans for the evening. But she was wary of leaving the head of her division out to dry. Maria went into panic mode — contacting friends, cousins and cousins of friends, desperately hunting down a replacement for a baby-sitting job that was technically not even hers to start with.
“Finally, my childhood friend who was sick said she’d do it and just hide her cough,” Maria says.
Every year, young women straight out of college flock to coveted, competitive New York-based industries such as public relations, fashion and magazine publishing, desperate to climb the ladder to success. So when a boss asks an eager underling to baby-sit their tot, most wouldn’t dare say no.
“I think when you’re in publishing, you accept it as part of the reality,” says Dara Pettinelli, 29, about women who baby-sit for their bosses. Pettinelli, who currently works as an associate editor at Babble.com, baby-sat twice a month for a senior coworker at More magazine while working there as an editorial assistant and then assistant editor from 2005 to 2008.
“I think anyone who is in that assistant role in publishing knows the drill. And the ones who don’t, don’t last long.”
While most employees take the baby-sitting gig to curry favor with the boss, many are also doing it because they need the cash. Glamorous though they seem, the majority of entry-level media jobs pay about $25,000 a year — barely enough to cover the rent on a fifth-floor walk-up studio.
Baby-sitting at $15 to $25 an hour for four to five hours a week becomes a viable way to increase one’s salary, or at least afford a monthly wine-drenched dinner at the Spotted Pig. “It’s something that a lot of people do when they first start, to be able to pay their bills,” explains Katie Kramer, 25, a publicist who lives in the East Village and cares for a colleague’s kids after-hours.