When Giselle Maurice got hired as a nanny for a family in New York, she probably expected that she would have to put up with a little trouble from the kids every now and then. What she almost certainly did not foresee, however, was that the mother of the children would send her a racist text twice on her first day, then proceed to fire her when she realised her "mistake".
Maurice had only been in her post for a matter of hours when she is said to have received a text from Lynsey Plasco-Flaxman that read, "NOOOOOOOOOOO ANOTHER BLACK PERSON."
Lynsey had reportedly intended to send the message to her husband, Joel Plasco, but sent it to the nanny in error. Then, in her attempt to resend the message to Joe, she sent it to Maurice again.
Realising that she'd just insulted her new employee (and exposed herself as a racist), Lynsey fired Maurice, saying that she felt "uncomfortable" about the situation. She later tried to justify her words by saying that she was expecting a Filipino nanny, and that Maurice - who is African American - was actually let go because she'd "done a bad job".
However, Maurice, who is 44 years old and has a long history of working in childcare, wasn't just going to take that excuse and move on. Instead, she's suing the family for discrimination.
"[I want] to show them, look, you don’t do stuff like that," the nanny told the New York Post. "I know it’s discrimination."
But Lynsey and Joe claim that they did not have much choice other than to fire her, as her work would have been affected by the comments she had received via text.
"[My wife] had sent her something that she didn’t mean to say," said Joel. "She’s not a racist. We’re not racist people."
He went on: “But would you put your children in the hands of someone you’ve been rude to, even if it was by mistake? Your newborn baby? Come on.”
But Maurice insists she would not have treated the kids any differently.
"This is my reputation. Why would I do something to a baby?" she said. "I was willing to work with her and prove her wrong, but it was her conscience, and she couldn’t work with me anymore."
The incident actually happened back in 2016, and since then the nanny has tried to settle the issue through mediation. When Joel and Lynsey would not comply, though, she realised she had to take the case further, and therefore filed a lawsuit asking for the wages she would have been paid during that period ($350/day for six months).
Joel, who is a banker, is outraged at the suit, which he claims is nothing more than "extortion".
"I’m not someone who has millions of dollars lying around to just pay off people that are coming after me for extortion. And now you’re playing straight into her hands," he said.
"My wife was two months off having a baby, suffering from a very difficult situation. You’re going to go after someone like that? That’s not a very nice thing to do."
The lawsuit is ongoing.
