Waiting for contract but need advice regarding phobia

Hi everyone!

So I've been offered a trainee engineer job and am waiting on my contract with a start date on March 29th.

At the assessment there was a form to fill in, one of the questions being 'do you have any phobias?'

I have a fear of spiders and wrote that down.

Since then, I have seen a few mentions of 'must like spiders' etc and am now feeling rather nervous...

Surely if fear of spiders were a deal breaker they wouldn't have offered me a job???

Are spiders a big issue when you're tinkering with wires???!!

It's a daft question I know but when you've got a phobia it sort of plays over and over in your mind so I thought I'd ask...

Edited by Allicia (Fri 12-Feb-21 14:26:10)

Spiders will be in just about every part of the network you work in. The question you need to ask yourself is how bad is your phobia?
You could be at the top of a pole you brushed away its webs and out it comes, or head in a joint it crawls up the side of the box next to your hand. You stick your hand in the bottom of a dark cab pull out a handfull of wires and there's a spider on your hand. Honestly they are literally everywhere if you can ignore them and get on with your job youll be fine there are plenty of engineers that dont like them and manage perfectly fine. Personally I'd be more worried about the customers

Edited by ShavedApe (Fri 12-Feb-21 14:54:15)

In reply to a post by ShavedApe:

Spiders will be in just about every part of the network you work in. The question you need to ask yourself is how bad is your phobia?
You could be at the top of a pole you brushed away its webs and out it comes, or head in a joint it crawls up the side of the box next to your hand. You stick your hand in the bottom of a dark cab pull out a handfull of wires and there's a spider on your hand. Honestly they are literally everywhere if you can ignore them and get on with your job youll be fine there are plenty of engineers that dont like them and manage perfectly fine. Personally I'd be more worried about the customers

Ugh! Just reading your post made my skin crawl! Honestly, I hoped if I'd actually been specific about spiders, somebody may have thought to go into further detail.

I actually applied and was offered the same job some years ago but had to decline due to a family health issue. I can't remember it being mentioned then (I'm SURE I'd remember) but then the assessment was a written and practical test to see if you were capable of basic electrics (i.e. wiring a plug). The recent assessment had none of that, it was simply based around your knowledge of the company and your customer care handling. Seems strange...

When you are strapped to a pole and a 3 inch hornet wakes up in the block terminal your working on you'll forget about the spiders.

In reply to a post by partial:

When you are strapped to a pole and a 3 inch hornet wakes up in the block terminal your working on you'll forget about the spiders.

My worse experience (apart from nearly getting shot in Brick Lane) was an ada snake that I thought was a piece of rope in a joint box

In reply to a post by dect:

In reply to a post by partial:

When you are strapped to a pole and a 3 inch hornet wakes up in the block terminal your working on you'll forget about the spiders.

My worse experience (apart from nearly getting shot in Brick Lane) was an ada snake that I thought was a piece of rope in a joint box

OMG! You guys aren't helping! Snakes, hornets, getting shot at... sounds like some sort of horror movie!

In reply to a post by Allicia:

In reply to a post by dect:

In reply to a post by partial:

When you are strapped to a pole and a 3 inch hornet wakes up in the block terminal your working on you'll forget about the spiders.

My worse experience (apart from nearly getting shot in Brick Lane) was an ada snake that I thought was a piece of rope in a joint box

OMG! You guys aren't helping! Snakes, hornets, getting shot at... sounds like some sort of horror movie!

Its not the spiders you need to worry about, its those pesky customers, they get right under your skin