Finally, your chickens have come home to roost. You killed an innocent creature – the office cactus – and now you must pay with your life.

After six months at your new job, Ian entrusted you with the task of looking after the much-loved office cactus, Gertrude, while he selflessly took a week off to organise his best mate’s stag do in Ibiza.

Gertrude’s been around for a long time – some call her the company mascot. She can be prickly, but goddamit she’s seen this firm through some tough times. Last year, she was almost given a salaried role (but was beaten to it by f**king Carol).

You’ve never been green fingered, but you thought that for something this important, you’d rise to the challenge. Oh boy were you wrong. They shouldn’t have trusted you with a young life so full of potential. In the space of three days you simultaneously managed to drown and starve the so-called ‘desert plant’, at one point feeding it with Lucozade because you couldn’t be bothered to get up from your desk for water, but it turns out succulents don’t thrive on electrolytes. You then tried to save it with a double espresso, because of your boss’ mug that said that was the solution to all of life’s problems, but that definitely made it worse.

Now, according to the 68 page contract you signed on your first day, in between the invasive physical examination that no one else seems to have done, and handing over your passport which they inexplicably kept for a week, you must die too.

In a ceremony known company-wide as ‘Gertrude’s Revenge’, you will be dunked into a pot of soil and water head first until you join all your past plants in Hell. It’s only fair. It happened to Sandra from HR last month after she finished the CFO’s crunchy nut cornflakes and replaced them with regular cornflakes. She took her asphyxiation by dry Weetabix on the nose and now you must also face your time with quiet dignity. Remember…you deserve this.

The management team are talking about a company-wide day off for the cactus’s funeral, where doves will be released and Millie Bobby Brown will sing ‘Amazing Grace’. You will be buried in a shallow grave and never spoken of again. Good luck in your barren, windowless Sahara of an afterlife.

By Daisy and David Bard