For the first 10 mins, this post had no title

I had my staff induction today, and it was absolute bollocks. I hoped I had left behind all the corporate rubbish in my last job, but it seems to also have a stronghold at the Uni training centre. If it wasn't for an amusing incident with a spider, I might well not have made it through the day.

It didn't start well, as I was hungover again after another trip to the Drum and Bass empire that is known as the White Rabbit (my dancing had not improved, BTW).

I got a coffee, sat down and introduced myself to my table. Within 1.5 seconds there were 3 middle aged women whinging at me about how shit their jobs were, and how under valued and under paid they felt at work. This was depressing, at best. I looked at the floor in the hope that they might stop, but only succeeded in noticing a spider (quite large, maybe a category 2) that had suddenly appeared (as they do, probably out of a His Dark Materials -type window from another world) and was bundling his legs towards me. I tried not to panic, got my feet up off the floor and followed his every move like a hawk. My behaviour attracted some attention and I felt that I had to say something. I interrupted the conversation of the women, which had continued (probably on auto-moaning pilot) in spite of my evasive actions,

'Sorry to butt in, but theres a spider down there' I pointed out, now trying to casually shuffle my chair out of his predicted path of terror. In a moment of genius I decided to move my bag too as I thought he might be trying to get to get under it as a shelter. He was, and I took a brief, but sweet moment of celebration as Spidey's plan was foiled, and he changed course towards the organiser’s bag, which upon reaching he promptly disappeared underneath.

Semi relief. *

'Sorry, I don't like spiders much' I said, and the women all gave me a look which suggested I had lost all of my credibility as someone who was worthy of having them whinge to.

2 hours later and I was sitting through the 3rd talk that was presentation-rohypnol and decided that I had actually reached the point at which I had no further will to live. At this point the organiser guy, who was changing the PowerPoint slides for the speakers, decided for some reason that he wanted to have a fumble in his bag.

Aaarrrggghhhh..... not good.... My mind was desperately grabbing at anything that might have kept it awake, so I started thinking through the possibilities of what lay instore for the next 10 seconds.

If he fumbled too much, spidey might have got hurt, organiser guy might have seen spidey next to his hand and panicked, or worse still, and most likely, spidey might have run out from his hiding place and resumed his march of death towards me. I’m not sure if it was my hangover, or my brain craving for something to do, but I thought it would be a good idea to warn the guy. Since 'Equal Opportunities in the Workplace' lady was in mid-speech, I thought that maybe I should write down a warning. I got my pen, and scribbled down this on the back of my staff induction timetable:













and tried to catch bag fumblers eye as I tentatively put it on the floor with the arrow pointing towards where I had seen spidey disappear.

Bag fumbler wasn't expecting this, and I got my second strange look of the morning. After an uncomfortable 30 seconds of me trying to whisper an explanation that a spider had run under his bag earlier, and that this was not a good thing, organiser guy decided it was best to not talk to the weirdo who was whispering something about a giant spider and turned away to continue his slide swapping over.

Phew, that was close. I had almost looked a bit silly there.

50 more minutes and 'Volunteer Coordinator Widening Participation' woman had overrun into lunch by 17 minutes. She seemed awfully chirpy about this, which, needless to say, I was not. I began considering which of the things available on the tabletop I could have used to kill myself with quickest if she had carried on speaking for more than another minute. Finally she gave out a copy of her presentation in case we ever wanted to refer back to it (yeah, as if) and offered the critical words,

'So, has anyone got any questions?’

Surely not.

Please no.

'I wonder if you could just explain again about where I can find you on the intranet' says the woman who taught me what hate really is.

'Oh now let me see... if you go onto the intranet, I think we're under the 'volunteering' tab’ says chirpy. 'Now just let me check..'

Yeah, funny that, id have never looked for volunteering info under the volunteering tab.

Lunch was good. I didn't go back for the afternoon.

I need some sleep.

*No not that sort (honestly, your dirty minds), I meant I was partially relaxed.