It's fair to say that every babysitter has stumbled upon something they didn't want to know, hear, or see once or twice in the game.
Well, Reddit user MiniPlesiosaur asked babysitters to share the dark secrets they've learned about the parents they work for, and these are hilarious, weird, and maybe a little disturbing:
1. "When I was 13, I used to babysit for my neighbors' three kids, and one day the 7-year-old asked me to get a toy from her parents' dresser. So I went into their room and opened the dresser. In the first drawer, there was nothing but stacks of cash. I thought, 'Weird, but not my business.' Then the little girl pointed at the second drawer and said, 'Oh, don't open that one. Mommy says it has bags of sugar in it...'"
2. "I was a very popular babysitter when I was about 15, and often I would have kids from two or three different families at once. I didn't care because I got triple the pay! Well, I was recently told why I always had multiple groups of kids like that — turns out the small town I lived in had a swingers club, and I was their go-to babysitter!"
3. "I would walk my neighbor's two kids home from the school bus and then babysit them at their apartment. Well, one day when we entered the apartment, I heard a door shut inside. I thought it was an intruder, so I grabbed the kids' baseball bat and threw open the bathroom door. There was the mom, half-naked, with a guy that wasn't her husband. She must have forgotten there was a half-day at school that day."
4. "In the 1980s, my aunt babysat for the Italian family next door in a small town in New Jersey where everyone knew their neighbors. Well, fast forward to when the dad — along with 21 others — was arrested for being part of the 'Pizza Connection,' a mafia conspiracy involving the Sicilians, the Bonnano crime family, and 1.6 billion dollars worth of heroin. He'd told my grandfather he was a cheese importer!"
"The family, including the kids, all disappeared, and the dad was sentenced to 20 years in prison."
5. "I was a nanny for a young boy, and his dad worked for his in-law's painting company. Well, one day I noticed that the name of the company — the mom's maiden surname — was the same as the dad's. I thought it was a funny coincidence, so I pointed it out. And the dad froze up and then said, 'Oh...that's because my wife and I are first cousins.'"
6. "The mom I babysat for had me watch her kids while she went to fuck her husband's (ex) best friend."
7. "My sister was babysitting for a family down the street in 1982 when one of the kids threw up, so she called my mom to come over and help her find cleaning supplies. They tried the garage, but it was locked. Well, a few weeks later, that family's house got raided by the FBI. They had planted some bombs in a refinery in Texas, and had a small arsenal in that locked garage!"
8. "My friend was babysitting some kids, and they kept asking to have beer. When she said 'No,' they protested, 'But Dad gives it to us!'"
9. "I worked at a kid's play place for a long time, and attended to the children that were dropped off by their parents. At one party, I overheard a little boy say, 'Well, I saw my daddy bend my mommy over and spank her. That will teach her to bounce a check again!'"
10. "The family I babysat for had a locked room in their basement. I opened it out of curiosity one day, and found a LOT of Nazi stuff inside."
11. "One family I babysat for lived in a fully-furnished house that looked straight out of Better Homes and Gardens magazine, but there was NOTHING in the drawers, fridge, or cabinets. There were also no toiletries in the bathroom except toilet paper, no food or silverware in the kitchen, no clothes in the closets, and no toys. The mom told me to just order food for the kids while they watched TV. It was so weird — like they were squatting in a model home or something!"
12. "The kids I was babysitting were wrestling in the living room when all of a sudden the smell of dank filled the room. The kids stopped and asked, 'What's that?' Turns out, one of them had knocked a big tin can off a shelf, and their parents' weed stash spilled everywhere!"
13. "I babysat for my neighbors' two kids who were super nice, Pottery Barn-type people. But somehow, they always came home mysteriously late with no cash left to pay me, so they would stop by my house the next day to do so. I was always confused as to how they spent all the cash they'd planned for me at dinner and a movie, and why their date nights would go until 3 A.M., until one night I moved the wife's purse and found a large roll of singles..."
14. "I nannied for a wealthy couple, and the husband had a study that the wife joked about never being allowed inside. Well I'm a nosy fucker, so one day I roamed around in there. It looked like a normal room with a big desk, walls of bookshelves, and architecture books everywhere, so I was kinda disappointed. But then I grabbed a book off one of the shelves and found $500 pressed between its pages..."
"I picked up another book, and found the same thing. I checked about 10 books in total, and every single one had a stack of money hidden in it."
15. "A family member of mine was a babysitter in the 70's. A couple who lived nearby asked her to watch their baby a few times, and every time she'd go there, they'd say the baby was sleeping and NOT to check on it..."
Some responses have been edited for length and clarity.