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The Scientific Word Processor
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Symbol Dynamics® EXP®
The Scientific Word Processor
| Continuously supported since 1986 |
If you attend a school or university, log into JSTOR, ProQuest, or EBSCOhost. Search for the exact phrase in quotation marks: "The Efficient Babysitter". Many obscure short stories were published in literary journals (e.g., The Missouri Review or Glimmer Train) in the 1990s and 2000s. These databases offer PDF downloads directly from the original scan.
While multiple versions of "efficient babysitter" tropes exist in folklore, the most requested short story follows a specific, unsettling arc. The narrative typically centers on a teenage protagonist—often meticulous, logical, and emotionally detached—who takes a job watching a middle-class family’s children.
Unlike the chaotic, fun-loving babysitter archetype, this character is defined by efficiency. She sanitizes the kitchen, organizes the pantry by expiration date, and puts the children to bed with robotic precision. The parents return to a spotless house and silent, sleeping kids. At first, they are ecstatic. the efficient babysitter short story pdf
But the "efficiency" escalates. The babysitter begins creating spreadsheets for the children’s bathroom breaks. She labels toys by educational value and discards "inefficient" ones. The climax often arrives when the parents discover that the babysitter has applied her logic to discipline: removing a "problematic" child (a pet, a noisy sibling, or an obstacle) with the same cold practicality she uses to arrange cutlery.
The horror is not supernatural—it is systemic. The story asks: What happens when care becomes logistics? Informative Paper: The Efficient Babysitter – A Short
A common frustration for those looking for "the efficient babysitter short story pdf" is the murky origins of the text. Unlike Poe or Hemingway, this story often appears in anonymous online repositories (Reddit’s r/nosleep, Creepypasta wikis, or academic handouts with no citation).
Many attribute the story to Lydia Davis due to her minimalist, cutting style, but this is a misattribution. Others suggest it is a modern retelling of a Shirley Jackson theme (efficiency versus chaos). In reality, the most widely circulated version seems to be an original piece of internet short fiction published around the early 2010s, possibly by an unpublished author. Many obscure short stories were published in literary
Because of this ambiguity, finding a single "official" PDF is difficult. However, anthologies focusing on Psychological Horror in the Workplace or Domestic Dystopias have begun including it.
The narrative follows a teenage babysitter who prides herself on efficiency. While the parents are away, she completes all her household chores early: washes the dishes, tidies the living room, and puts the children to bed ahead of schedule. Proud of her extra time, she decides to surprise the parents by washing the dirty dishes she finds in the kitchen sink—unaware that the parents had deliberately left those dishes soaking. The story’s famous twist ending reveals that the soaking dishes contained the family’s pet goldfish, which the father had planned to clean out of the bowl and transfer. The efficient babysitter inadvertently flushes the goldfish down the disposal. When the parents return, the final line delivers the ironic punch: “But I was just trying to be efficient,” she says, as the mother stares into the empty fishbowl.
If you are determined to add this story to your digital library, avoid sketchy file-sharing sites that often host malware or corrupted text. Instead, follow these legitimate paths:
Given the ambiguous authorship, finding a free PDF can be tricky. We strongly advocate for legal and ethical methods. Here is a step-by-step guide: