As people in the office were putting up Halloween decorations one woman asked that they be place far away from her because she was afraid of spiders. In fact, her exact words were, “Please put those over there. I am deathly afraid of spiders.”

Unfortunately, one of her co-workers thought it would be funny to poke fun at this woman’s fears. This woman was 50-something and was recovering her sight in an eye where she had recently suffered from a detached retina. Her co-worker approached her from the side of her bad eye and placed a huge, fuzzy, fake spider on her shoulder.

Not being able to tell if the spider was real or not, the poor woman screamed, wet her pants and then quit her job. This sad event happened on a Friday morning and the woman was gone by Friday afternoon.

As the HR manager, I was so upset and determined to ensure that the aggressor was punished that I called the president of the company the next day, Saturday, to talk about it. He agreed that a reprimand was in order.

But, along with all of the other shocks and spooks that happen around Halloween, I received a big surprise on Monday morning when I arrived at work to find out that, instead of punishing the offender, a tribunal had been called to figure out why I was out to get the person who had played the trick. Now I was in trouble. Any wonder why I left that job?

– Kelly, Des Moines, Iowa