If a white-collar woman walked a day in Annetta Wernska’s shoes, pumps would be out of the question.
Wernska, 27, works as a nanny, looking after four children, ranging in age from 2 to 9. Plus she does the laundry. Plus she prepares meals. Plus she is learning to speak English in her “spare” time.
Wernska, who is from Poland, has been working for the Amato family for nearly two years. She commutes to their home from her North Side apartment, arriving for work by 7:30 a.m. Her workday ends at, maybe, 6 p.m.
“It’s a long day, but I like it, because I like to be busy,” Wernska says. “I love the kids, especially the youngest, Nick, who is 2. I really love him like my own little son. I saw him take his first steps.”
She works for Sharon Durfee, an orthodontist with a thriving practice in Evanston, and Jim Amato, who operates an import business out of their home. Wernska is their sixth nanny; Durfee calls her “our best nanny ever.”
Durfee says she placed a help-wanted ad in a Polish newspaper and Wernska was one of seven women who called to apply for the job.
“Annetta’s English was very poor at first and we were hesitant because we thought that would be a problem,” Durfee says. “But she wanted the job so badly. And when she came to apply, she said, ‘Let me cook for you,’ and she made something from scratch, working with what she found in my kitchen.
“I’m so glad we hired her,” says Durfee, who comes home over her lunch hour to visit her two youngest children.
“She goes the extra step. She loves the kids and she’s patient and fair. She knows the kids’ routines better than I do, and I appreciate that.”
Wernska says her job is easier since two of the Amato children are in school.
“The first year here, I worked pretty, pretty, pretty hard,” Wernska recalls. “My English was not so good, everything was different, the people were different and it was a different way to live.”
Nick was only 6 months old when she started working for the family and had to be carried everywhere, she says.
“At first, the kids were not so nice to me,” she says. “Now, they know me.”
One of her toughest challenges, she says, is looking after the oldest Amato child, Alex, 9.
“He’s difficult. It’s hard to give him orders,” Wernska says. “He doesn’t listen to me and he’s not afraid of me.”
The family recently took a weeklong vacation in Florida, leaving Nick at the family’s home with Wernska.
“We trust her completely,” Durfee says. “She’s never given us any reason not to trust her. We’re crossing our fingers she’ll stay with us.”
Wernska says she usually arrives at her home around 7 p.m., then prepares dinner for her husband, who has a job installing wooden floors.
“Finally, at 9 o’clock at night, I am free to do what I want to do,” she says. She attends English classes three times a week.
She earned a degree in accounting and finance at a university in Poland and hopes, one day, to work in that profession in the United States. Her first job was as a nanny for a Polish family in Chicago.
“I’m not complaining,” she says. “This is only my second job here, and I know I have to work my way up.”
