This is the first story in Odd Jobs: A Series on Weird Things I’ve Done for Money.

Without further ado, a tale of–whoa.

High in the Wasatch Mountains just outside Salt Lake City is a strange little town where every year the rich and famous go to ski the “greatest snow on earth”. Stars and executives connect with their inner adventurer going off-piste now and again, indulge in high level pampering, wine and dine apres ski, buy overpriced boots and jackets and if their nanny can’t travel with them, dump their offspring on a stranger so as to have a family vacation without the nuisance of actually spending any time with their family.

Now, some parents I worked for were great and treated me like I had a soul. It was especially interesting to me that the highest profile client I had was the least fussy and one of the most independent and capable parents I served while some folks lower on the totem pole ordered me around like a servant.

My first day as a ski town nanny, I found myself working for a ridiculously wealthy family from Manhattan for their 10 day vacation over the winter holidays. The household consisted of two grandparents, two adult children, their spouses and their four kids. I’m not a parent but by my calculations, having six adults to care for four children who took a lot of naps and went to bed early seemed like a pretty good set up. Throw in a full-time nanny and it felt a little excessive. But, they wanted to relax so whatever.

Day 1, I discovered that I would be working with a second full-time nanny to further improve that ratio so as to make damn sure the kiddos would not be interfering with any of the adult’s fun-having or very important work-doing. They were to be barricaded in the small sitting room off the kitchen in their sprawling, slope side mansion when they weren’t napping in their rooms upstairs.

On that first day I learned something very important: Working a job where you’re hoping for a big ol’ tip means that you may have to trade in your self-respect for cash. Forget advocating for reasonable solutions to simple problems, asking for even a small amount of flexibility or telling anyone “no” for any reason. This is how, although not in any way a part of my job description, I found myself changing the diapers of two elderly dachshunds.

The big objective on Day 2 was sorting out ski lessons for the two older children, a five year old girl and and a four year old boy. We’ll call them Madeline and Alistair. Madeline had been booked with a private ski instructor for four hours per day for an entire week. This seemed like overkill to me as Madeline didn’t exactly seem psyched out of her mind on skiing. Alistair was scheduled to attend ski school with other young children for the week which made sense to me except for that us two nannies were now only responsible for a baby and a two year old for most of the day. While this might sound awesome, let me assure you–it is not. Because what you find yourself doing for long stretches of time is wiping already clean counters, arranging and rearranging books and toys and trying to appear busy  when you are actually redundant many times over.

So back to that second day. When Alistair found out that his cousin Madeline was getting private lessons, he wanted a private ski instructor, too. Two sets of parents and one nanny (me) took two children to their lessons that morning with the hope that we could all convince Alistair to go to ski school with the other kids, that it would be fun!

This didn’t happen. What did happen is that five adults dropped off one little girl with her ski instructor. Five adults tried to take Alistair to ski school. Five adults failed in getting Alistair amped on hanging out with other kids. And, one mom ended up paying for a week’s worth of private lessons in addition to a week of ski school which was non-refundable.

Math, math. Math, math, math. That’s two grandparents, four parents, two nannies, two private ski instructors and one ski school teacher person. That is 11 adults:4 kids. Or 2.75 caregivers per child.

Kiddos would return home around 4pm overtired and hungry but unwilling to sit down and eat their damn food. We would go upstairs to get ready for bed and at 6:30pm on the dot we’d bring them back down to participate in Hanukkah. Parents and grandparents would hold their children, record videos, give gifts, say prayers and light candles. This would last approximately 10 minutes. Then TO BED!

On day 3, the family decided that the other nanny rubbed them the wrong way. There was nothing she had said or done that offended them. They just didn’t love her. Like me this woman was neat, helpful and had an education related master’s degree. But, off she went and was replaced the following day.

Days 4-6 looked pretty much the same. Feed babies and kids kale smoothie. Send older kids off to ski lessons. Wipe already clean counters. Wipe dog butts. Rearrange Melissa and Doug wooden toys. Reorganize books. Try to feed exhausted children. Bathe children. Hanukkah. Repeat.

Day 7-Shit went downhill. One of the moms, while tearing up the slopes (and let me say that she was actually really sweet) encountered a tree and experienced a boot-top tib fib fracture of her left leg. The house was thrown into chaos. This meant that Dad would be responsible for his two sleeping children–literally–all night, with only the help of his mother-in-law, father-in-law, sister-in-law and brother-in-law until the nannies arrived at 8am. To mitigate this nightmare, I agreed to come in early.

Then there was Mom to be concerned about. She legitimately needed quite a bit of care. But, instead of banding together, a service was called in to provide ’round the clock nursing for her. Needless to say, she was on a lot of drugs. This got tricky as she was still breastfeeding. Instead of pumping and dumping and giving the baby formula, she insisted on continuing to breastfeed. So…now she and the baby were high and who was the assistant for this half-conscious boobs out situation? Me. Of course.

Because we didn’t have quite enough help, the big guns were called in. The family bought an $1,100 plane ticket for the next day, which happened to be Christmas Eve, for their 55 year old Filipino nanny who was on her week’s vacation with her own family.

Ok, so back to math. Two grandparents, three adult children, two master’s degree holding professional educators, two private ski instructors and one unused ski school teacher person, one ’round-the-clock nurse and one full-time, professional caregiver were on deck to provide for one otherwise healthy patient with a broken leg and four children. That ratio looks like this 12:5.

Day 10-Oh my god it is almost over… At the end of their vacation, I was awarded a $300 tip and asked to come to Manhattan to nanny for the month of May as Mom was doing some consulting during that time and Nanny would have the month off. As a side-note, I’m amazed at how many Moms in this demographic are “consultants” I’ve never figured out what that means but, maybe I will try it someday!

I graciously declined the offer to spend a month in the Big Apple, although for the money they offered, I can’t say I didn’t think about it.

For this family, I wish many happy and tree-free days of skiing and a few extra cuddles each day with their children who need their moms and dads no matter how bonkers they may be.