Federal Government Employees Are Sent Home Because of a Spider

Most people do not jump for joy whenever they spot a spider. They’re more likely to run away screaming from the arachnid. While most spiders can’t actually harm us humans, we still tend to fear that whenever we come across a spider it may be one of the few with a venomous bite that could possibly kill us. Many harmless spiders are often mistaken for more dangerous species, leading people to panic any time they see a spider that looks even remotely like one of the venomous kind. The spider that people tend to most often mistakenly identify are brown recluse spiders. Because of their brown coloring, many people panic any time they catch sight of a small, brown spider. The problem is that there are many small, brown spiders that exist that are not brown recluses. People’s overwhelming fear of these venomous spiders can actually interrupt activities like going to work. This was the case when 50 federal government employees were sent home from work for two full days due to a mistaken brown recluse sighting.

Back in June employees at 2300 St. Laurent Blvd., a Shared Services Canada building, were sent for two days home by managers after an unusual spider was spotted. Note that said spider wasn’t actually identified as a dangerous species. After the building’s owner paid to have the office fumigated, the employees returned to work as usual. However, again in October an employee spotted and managed to catch a spider lurking in the office. Since no one at the office could identify the spider, they sent it to an entomologist to be properly examined. However, even though they caught the spider, employees were once again sent home for two days due to fear that it was a brown recluse and that its brothers and sisters were hiding all around the office waiting to bite some unsuspecting worker. They didn’t even wait for the verdict on the species of the spider to come in from the entomologist, which confirmed that same day that it was a yellow sac spider, which is not known to be able to harm to humans. The office was once again fumigated before the employees received the go-ahead to return to their jobs.

Many experts such as Catherine Scott, an arachnologist and PhD student at the University of Toronto, are saying this response to finding a spider in an office was a serious overreaction, which cost regular tax payer money. “This is totally absurd and a giant waste of money,” she said. “Fumigating the office with chemicals is probably more dangerous to the people working in that office than a spider would have been, even if it had been a brown recluse spider.” Just the last employee evacuation that lasted two days cost taxpayers $18,000. According to Scott, even finding a brown recluse spider that far north is almost impossible. “Only a handful of individual brown recluse spiders, literally less than five, have ever been recorded in Canada in the last century.”

Do you think this was a major overreaction to spotting a spider? Do you think this kind of reaction is unfair to the public, since it ends up costing them money? What would be a better way to handle this kind of situation?