Yesterday I went to “Appropriate Workplace Behavior” training (a.k.a. be nice to people different from you and don’t grab anyone’s bits) and today I read up on <a

href=”http://www.planetneverwinter.com/nwn/info/hotu/” target=”links”>Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark. This is the misbegotten result.

“Hi, my name is Kenny and I’m a <a href=”http://nwn.bioware.com/underdark/creature_drider.html”

target=”links”>[http://nwn.bioware.com/underdark/images/creature_drider2.jpg|image|drider]. Of course I wasn’t always this way. I was a Drow—used to carry big foreboding statues for the

temples of Lolth with my buds. It wasn’t great work, but when you live in a lawful evil matriarchy, you take what you can get. Then one day I drop a statue of Her Majesty the Spider Queen, and the next

thing I know, her livid eye is upon me, and I’m bustin’ out extra legs and all. I tried to sue for worker’s comp, but apparently the whole “evil” thing kinda drove that sorta thing outta society down there.

Meanwhile, the other Drow revile me as a "damned by the Creepalicious one" monstrosity, I can't get a new job, and my new carapace needs some pretty expensive moisturizer to stay supple and

strong.

“So that’s when I followed a slaving party to the surface and decided to find a place with better laws for workers. And here I am in the U.S. of A.! There was a little trouble with INS at first, but when

they finally found my embassy, that division of INS disappeared, and I haven’t gotten any letters from ‘em since.

“I got a job at Toys ‘R’ Us, cuz I am mighty on the high shelf restocking—but after they figured out why the children were running and screaming, I lost that job, too. I started proceedings for

discrimination - I mean, I thought America accepted you even if your skin was a funny color, and I hoped that extended to eight legs - but I started lookin’ for gainful employ in the meantime. I looked

into Wal-Mart but bein’ a paeon of an evil empire was how I got in this fix. So now I work at Home Depot—again, the restocking is a major advantage. I really like to look at it as “differently-abled”. I

mean, I know the humans laugh at that term when it means “ain’t got no legs” or “can’t smell”, but damn, boys, are you able to shimmy up a concrete wall in 10 seconds without equipment? That’s

differently abled.

“So on the balance, I do alright. I get a lot of discrimination, but mostly people don’t know enough about my people to stereotype me. I wish people would stop

tryin’ to test whether I got “spider sense” though, cuz that was old the first time someone dropped a box of hose fittings on me. All I really want is understanding, and the chance to make an honest

living, and thanks to the Equal Opportunity laws, being a damned and deformed eight-legged outcast from an evil subterranean race won’t stand in my way.”