Dear Dark Lord: I Think the Spider Queen That Spawned an Army of Man-eating Arachnids Is Taking Advantage of Our Parental Leave Policy

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Sep 18, 2023

Dear Dark Lord,

Here in the Dark Army, we care about our employees, at least inasmuch as they’re willing to sacrifice their lives for The Darkness and ask for nothing in return.

To show them we care, and to stay current with leading Minion Resources practices that help us attract the evilest and most vile talent, we offer our underlings a number of benefits:

Time off to regrow appendages severed by the Forces of Light
Boil and wart insurance to maintain the disgusting growths that cover their bodies
And, of course, parental leave.

When we first rolled out our very generous parental leave policy, the thought was, “Most of our forces are sterile mutant abominations, so it shouldn’t affect our bottom line that much.” But one employee in particular is now making me question this policy. I think Gar-Spithrá the giant spider queen, she whom hath spawned an army of thousands of man-eating arachnids to serve at thy behest, is taking advantage of our parental leave policy.

Ever since she birthed the first thousand warriors of the terrifying 1st Spider Battalion, she has hardly spent a day in the office. At this point it feels like she’s just popping out sacs full of spider warriors solely to get more time off. I totally understand that raising thousands of carnivorous hellspawn is a difficult task for anyone, let alone a commander in the Army of Darkness. But at some point she’s supposed to come back to work, right?

She claims that working from her private lair is much more efficient, and that she’s perfectly able to manage her hivemind from the comfort of her own web. She says this allows her to multitask commanding her spider forces, maintaining her intricate network of death webs, and suckling her offspring on the flesh of errant knights. But personally, I think it’s more important to see people’s faces in the office.

What should I do? Should I confront her about it and tell her it’s time to come back to work? Should we change our parental leave policy and apply it retroactively? Should I start recruiting for a less family-inclined spider queen to replace her?

Technically, given the number of spider warriors she has birthed, she has accrued something like five centuries of leave. She’s still working from her lair part time because she’s dedicated to the mission of casting the Realm into Eternal Shadow, and because her performance review would reflect poorly if she didn’t. But I don’t want us to become one of those “work from home” types of evil armies, and I’m worried if we don’t address this situation soon, some of our other arthropodic death monsters will start getting pregnant, too.

Pugnaciously thine,

General Úr’ganska, Vice Overlord of Minion Resources, Dark Army

Dear General Úr’ganska,

This is surely a different generation than the one we came up in at the dawn of the First Age. The man-eating spider queens these days expect more work-life balance. They aren’t content to eat our enemies while simultaneously laying thousands of eggs throughout the terrifying network of curséd caves that we call “the office” unless they also get a little time off for themselves.

It wasn’t always like this.

I remember the first arthropod soldier we ever hired was a horseshoe crab. That guy never complained. He never really did anything, either, because horseshoe crabs are pretty much useless (horseshoe crabs were the only ones willing to work for the Dark Army at that time so we had to take what we could get). But he never complained.

Did he ever ask for a day off? No.

Did he raise a fuss about our lack of a parental leave policy? Bog no. I’m not even sure if horseshoe crabs can reproduce, and I definitely do not want to visualize how that works if they can.

No matter how tough the going got, he would just crawl along the beach, quietly eating mollusks and occasionally murdering someone.

But that was a different workplace, a different time. Is it annoying that our employees want to spend time with their “families” instead of devoting every waking hour to destroying the Kingdom and enslaving all the creatures of the Realm? Sure is. But if they come back from leave with a rejuvenated desire to cast the Realm into Eternal Shadow, then I’d say a few extra centuries off for suckling their venomous hatchlings is worth it.

And, anyway, it’s not like they’re being paid.

So I say let it slide. Gar-Spithrá is doing a fine job hive-minding her troops from home, and she’s replenishing the forces of evil every time one of her horrific egg sacs spews forth another platoon of ravenous spiderlings.

Also, you don’t want to see what happens when you make a spider queen mad.

I remain, dear vassal, thy Vile Master,

Dark Lord Dörgu Bøgerleshk, Bane of the Nrymbobl, Usurper of Forlorn Souls, Blood Govourner of the Flaming Infernal Swamplands

Dear Dark Lord: I Think the Spider Queen That Spawned an Army of Man-eating Arachnids Is Taking Advantage of Our Parental Leave Policy

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Dear Dark Lord letters: