When I was a teenager, like 17 I think, my best friend and I both got summer jobs at the estate that neighboured my family's cottage. My mom's cousin was the property manager, so getting the job wasn't difficult. We were responsible for general maintenance and labour around the property, so mowing the lawns, pressure washing the top of the boathouses, weedeating, leaf blowing, transporting stuff around in the golf carts and making sure the boats were operating properly and full of fuel in anticipation of the family and guests coming up. Pretty simply stuff, and definitely not a bad job for a couple of kids out of school for the summer.
Our direct supervisor was a burly little guy, looked a bit like a dwarf from Lord of the Rings, my mom's cousin referred to him as a troll doll.
This guy was an absolute fiend when it came to recreational substance abuse. He had a ziplock baggie with like a full pound of pot in it with him most of the time. Saw a few acid tabs in there too at one point, as he wasn't overly careful when it came to leaving it around (on account of him being stoned out of his gourd I suspect). Now, he had a pretty menial job and had been doing it for decades, so maybe this was his way of breaking up the monotony, I don't know, I didn't ask, I wasn't judging him for it.
So the one day, we had to go take the boats out to get fuelled up and then fuel up the seadoos and take them for a good run (which was good, because one of them seized solid in the middle of the lake, so there was logic at play here, these things were ridden hard and put away wet). My buddy and I, along with another worker, took the seadoos while the the supervisor took the Supra ski boat. We were three-abreast and he's coming up behind us and he cuts across the wake coming off my unit, getting sprayed on the windshield in the process. I think nothing of it at the time.
We get back to the cottage and up to the maintenance building and the supervisor comes up to me using a "jovial serious" voice and says "that was pretty funny you cutting in front of the boat there, but don't do that, OK?". I responded that I was going straight and that he cut behind me. This was easily verifiable, as the three of us riding abreast, the gaps between us never changed. He drops the jovial and now he's just serious, and he tells me that I cut in front of the boat, and to just admit it. I, respond, with no change in tone, that I'm not admitting to something I didn't do. At this point, he simply explodes. He grabs me by the throat, he's beat red, I can see beads of perspiration forming on his boiling brow and smell the acrid, sour odour of old damp pot on his breath, it seems to be wafting from his tiny yellowed teeth as well as flowing up from deep within him, and he screams in my face "when I'm giving you sh**, just take the sh**!". Then he storms off.
I'm gobsmacked, standing there with my mouth agape, unsure as to what just happened. My buddy, 4x Golden Gloves champion, feeling like he needs to say something to break the silence, says "I was going to knock him out, but I wasn't sure of the implications..." I was glad he didn't, but simultaneously would have loved to have seen it.
He didn't lose his job over this, surprisingly. He was disciplined, and looked at me with a look of a dog that knows it was bad for the rest of the summer.
