Arachnid inspired almond arson

Imagine the following: It's your first day working a new job at a food distribution center. Sure, it's only a part-time gig, but maybe that's the best you can get right now. Maybe you're hoping this will develop into a full-time job. Perhaps you have dreams of working your way up the corporate ladder, turning this early opportunity into a successful and rewarding career. The sky's the limit at Waukesha food company, and you're ready to impress on the first day at work!

Making the rounds, you spot a spider on a bag of almonds. Naturally, you set fire to the spider and go on to the next task. After all, that's something you've been doing since childhood, so why stop now? Clearly, your life-long habit of incinerating spiders has gotten you this far, so one more sacrifice in the name of almond purity can only help, right?

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Well, things may not go as planned when the fire spreads to two bags of almonds. If you're like me, you probably thought "Two bags of almonds? So what?". Consider the fact that each of these bags weighed 2,100 pounds, and you'll understand how a towering almond conflagration could be problematic. Problematic to the tune of $13,000 worth of almonds destroyed, up to $20,000 in fines, and seven or more years in prison. But, yea! Got that spider!

The man in question was caught doing this on camera, and apologized for his behavior, blaming the spider. As is often the case with these kinds of stories, there is no evidence a spider was even present. Sure, we could take the word of a man who casually walked away from four thousand pounds of flaming almonds on his first day of work, but, and maybe this is just me, I'm not sure he's trustworthy.

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I think that in addition to being fired (pun!), fined, and jailed, the man should undergo psychological evaluation. Either he's a pyromaniac or dangerously arachnophobic. I guess both could be true. Who lights thousands of dollars worth of merchandise on fire and walks away ON YOUR FIRST DAY AT WORK? I could see a disgruntled employee who's been there for 14 years and still can't get a promotion saying "Screw this!" and burning the place down. But this was the guy's first day!

Most arachnophobes cannot get close enough to a spider to set it aflame, so it is hard to believe his behavior was motivated by fear. Also, there probably wasn't a spider there in the first place. This looks like yet another case where spiders are conveniently blamed to explain the worst of human behavior. Think of the almonds, people, think of the almonds!

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