Woman furious after 'terrified' colleague complains about spider brooch

18 October 2021, 10:00 | Updated: 18 October 2021, 11:00

By Heart

@thisisheart

A woman was forced to take off her spider brooch due to a colleague's phobia.

A woman was left baffled after her boss forced her to take off her sparkly spider brooch.

The anonymous Reddit user explained that she had bought a brand new piece of jewellery from Zara for Halloween.

But after she wore it to work, she was told to take it off immediately after a colleague made a formal complaint.

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In a post which has now gone viral, she said: “I quite often wear brooches and yesterday wore a new one to work.

“It is this one from Zara and is a reasonably large sparkly rhinestone spider, which I had pinned to a black jumper.

“Mid-morning my line manager approached and asked if I would be prepared to take the brooch off as a colleague had said that they have a phobia and was finding it distressing.”

The woman took it off and put it on her coat for the rest of the day, but was confused as to who would have had a problem with the brooch.

She continued: The complaint will have come from one of three people, based on who saw me yesterday morning.

“I'm not going to go digging to find out who it was and I don't want to cause anyone distress (which is the word that was used) but I've worked with all three of them for several years and this severe phobia has never come up before.”

The post has now received hundreds of comments, with Reddit users divided over the story.

One person wrote: “I have a severe phobia about spiders. I wish I didn't. The shock of seeing one makes my heart race.

“I can't bear to look at photos or even drawings of them, if I can help it, and actually taped together two pages of a children's encyclopedia so that I didn't accidentally open it at the photo of a spider.”

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Someone else shared their experience, writing: “I have a phobia of spiders. Believe me, I wish I didn’t, it can be crushingly awful at times.

“Phobias are not ridiculous, they are genuine psychological impairments.”

But someone else said: “ In three years of working together I'd have expected something to have come up

“Maybe a dead spider found in a drawer, or even one just scuttling across the floor; they're not exactly easy to avoid, and if she's so terrified that even a brooch will set her off, I'm amazed it didn't become known before.”

A fourth added: “You weren't being totally unreasonable BUT as someone who has a totally unreasonable phobia about spiders, I do understand the dilemma!

“As for you not having heard of her phobia in 3 years - I've been like this for 60 years and few people other than close family know.”