Spider Trouble

Derek arrived at work. And everything seemed normal enough…

Until he walked into a spider web!

He immediately launched himself into the “spider web dance.”

Sue walked in on this spectacle.

Then they both spotted the spider. It was creeping toward Derek’s briefcase.

At this very moment Bob arrived at work. He assessed the scene, and desperately wanted to leave.

But that would be so cowardly. Instead, he decided to leap up on the table and stay there.

Forever, if he had to.

Sue volunteered to kill the spider. She fetched one of Chachi’s shoes and positioned herself to make a deadly strike. Derek and Bob counted down from five, but at the last second Sue yelled, “Wait! Wait! Wait!”

This scenario repeated itself for 40 minutes.

It was clear that they would need another strategy.

Sue and Derek got to work, sketching out plans to kill the spider without getting anywhere near it. Meanwhile, Bob was assigned “spider monitor.”

Let me tell you, the creativity and hard work that was poured into the “Kill the Spider” effort was astonishing. The employees were operating at a level of productivity that was 40,000,000 times higher than normal.

The first contraption was a conveyor belt designed to transport the spider somewhere else.

Sue tried it out…

And it transported her…

back to the floor.

So… that didn’t work.

The next idea was more involved.

Really involved.

It ended up being a bit of an overkill. I mean seriously people, the spider is like a centimeter big.

Nonetheless they kept building at a furious pace. At one point Sue found herself looking for a place to plug in a huge USB cable.

Why did the contraption even HAVE a USB cable? It had seemed so important when they were creating the schematic. But she couldn’t recall why.

Eventually they realized their contraption was so huge they couldn’t even move it. Plus, they really weren’t sure what it did.

They decided to dismantle it and come up with another plan.

Then… something horrifying.

A freaking ENORMOUS spider. Beyond enormous. Bob dove over the wall, not caring if he lived or died.

In a panic, Sue and Derek jumped onto the table. The spider ate Chachi’s shoe in two bites, as if to say, “Weaklings, you have no chance.”

Then it moved over to feast on the orange chair. The only cool chair in the whole office.

Derek began to sob and throw up all at once.

It was at that moment that the most unexpected thing happened.

Bob returned, pushing a crate full of weapons.

Bob! The biggest chicken in the whole office. Yet here he was.

He had assembled a variety of things to try and defeat the spider.

The globe seemed an odd choice, but the scissors, broom, compass, fire extinguisher and cones were good. And was that… a GUN? Sue and Derek didn’t even want to know where that came from.

Sue ran out to set up the orange cones. They would serve as a signal to others to take a different route.

Then she began to heave items at the spider.

In another show of superiority, the spider ate the scissors in their entirety.

It was time for the gun.

Sue fired off a warning shot first.

Derek, who vehemently disagreed with this decision, tackled Sue to the ground.

She kept firing. But these shots weren’t a warning.

Meanwhile the warning shot ricocheted off the ceiling and came barreling toward Chachi’s cubicle. He was so engrossed in watching his aquarium he didn’t even notice the bullet whiz by.

In the breakroom things were looking desperate. The ammunition was gone.

Then Bob remembered that his “Defeat the Spider” kit contained one other item…

He held it up for the spider to see.

It was his old employee photo. Back when he had a Doris Day hairdo and a caterpillar mustache.

The spider seemed extremely disturbed by the image. It started darting around the room, crashing into things. Then it made a beeline for the wall.

It jumped over, much like Bob done had a few minutes earlier. But with a lot more grace.

Sue and Derek watched as the spider barreled through the front door of the building, seemingly running for its life.

It skittered right by Grandma Bernice, who noticed nothing out of the ordinary.

Back in the breakroom, Sue Derek and Bob tried to recover from their ordeal. Then Ted walked in. He knew nothing of the “big spider” incident — he had missed the whole thing. But when he saw the room he gasped. It wasn’t the state of the room that shocked him, it was the little spider. It was back, walking across a piece of white paper on the ground. And it frightened Ted deeply.

Without a word, Sue got up and walked over to the spider.

She crushed it with her bare hand.

Then she tossed it at Ted.

And just like that, she became a legend.

Coming Next: The employees try to bond during a ski vacation. But can they survive the slopes? Watch for the story on Friday, April 1.