He Bullied His Young Coworker for Three Months, So One Morning He Gave Him the Scare of His Life

At 18, getting a first real job paying $20 an hour in the Canadian oil patch sounded like winning the lottery.

It was the early 2000s, the minimum wage was still under $6, and the job required neither experience nor education. The work was called well testing, which meant setting up pressure equipment and flare stacks at new oil and gas wells, collecting readings, and spending long hours in the middle of nowhere.

The work itself wasn’t the problem.

The problem was Gary.

Gary was in his mid-50s, an alcoholic, lazy, and apparently very comfortable making his much younger coworker the target of his favorite hobby: humiliation. For three months, the young worker endured insults, condescending jokes, and comments that went far beyond ordinary workplace teasing.

Eventually, Gary pushed him past his breaking point.

And one morning, the young worker decided to give his bully a performance he would remember for the rest of his life.

Three Months of Being Gary’s Punching Bag

The job usually involved two-man crews working 12-hour shifts or four-man crews covering 24 hours. The narrator was a laborer, while Gary was his supervisor.

On paper, that meant Gary should have been teaching him.

In reality, Gary spent much of his time inside the work trailer watching DVDs, sleeping, and occasionally entering data into a computer.

The narrator did the physical work.

Gary also liked making jokes at his expense.

Except they weren’t really jokes.

When Gary discovered that the 18-year-old had never used a power drill, he asked whether his father had ever taught him anything.

The young man made the mistake of explaining that his father had only been in his life for a few years.

Gary remembered that.

The next time the young worker made a mistake, Gary threw it back at him, suggesting that his father had left because of him.

When the narrator objected, Gary gave him the classic bully’s defense:

He was only joking.

But the insults continued.

Because the work took place far from major towns, the two men also spent their evenings together in small-town restaurants and bars. Gary drank heavily every night and was frequently hungover the following morning.

Eventually, the narrator was doing most of the driving in Gary’s truck.

Gary was being paid for the kilometers.

The young worker was getting minimum wage for his travel time.

It wasn’t exactly a recipe for workplace harmony.

Then Gary Finally Went Too Far

After three months of swallowing the insults, the narrator finally said something.

During dinner one evening, he pointed out that Gary spent much of the trip sleeping while the narrator drove his truck. Maybe, he suggested, Gary could kick a little money his way for all the extra driving.

Gary didn’t appreciate the suggestion.

Instead, he unleashed another round of verbal abuse.

This time, it hit differently.

The young worker was reduced to angry tears, and when Gary threatened his job, something inside him finally snapped.

He didn’t necessarily want revenge.

He wanted out.

Then, the following morning, an opportunity appeared on the side of a lonely highway.

Gary was asleep in the passenger seat, as usual.

About 30 kilometers from the work site, the narrator spotted a semi-truck pulled over on a roadside turnout. The truck was running, and its driver was outside.

An idea formed.

A ridiculous idea.

A theatrical idea.

An idea that was probably much more dangerous than he understood at 18.

He stopped.

Then he approached the truck driver and asked for a favor.

The trucker agreed.

The Truckers of Rohan Assemble

Gary was apparently an exceptionally deep sleeper.

The narrator managed to arrange the pickup so that it was facing almost directly toward the enormous semi-truck.

Gary didn’t wake up.

Then the narrator turned on the pickup’s beacon.

The trucker responded by turning on his headlights.

And then came the air horn.

The narrator described it in wonderfully ridiculous Lord of the Rings terms, imagining the Truckers of Rohan answering the call while the horn sounded like the legendary signal of Helm’s Deep.

The noise was enormous.

The narrator honked the pickup’s horn and began screaming.

“F***! We’re gonna die!”

For less than a minute, the isolated highway became a one-man theatrical production of impending vehicular doom.

Then Gary woke up.

And apparently, he woke up with enthusiasm.

The narrator claimed Gary shot upward so violently that he nearly dented the ceiling.

The terrified reaction quickly turned into confusion, then rage.

Gary tried to threaten him, but he was so furious that he couldn’t even get his words out properly.

Meanwhile, the narrator was laughing.

He had spent three months being humiliated.

Now Gary was the one completely losing control.

“Can’t You Take a Joke?”

The irony wasn’t lost on the narrator.

As Gary raged about what had just happened, the young man reminded him of his favorite defense whenever someone objected to his insults.

“Can’t you take a joke?”

That apparently made Gary even angrier.

The narrator continued laughing as they drove toward the site.

Gary was furious enough to claim that he had dangerously high blood pressure and that the prank could have caused a stroke.

Years later, after eventually attending paramedic school, the narrator admitted that Gary had a point.

At 18, however, he had no idea how serious a medical emergency could potentially be.

What he did know was that Gary was furious.

And for once, Gary was the one who couldn’t intimidate him.

When they reached the work site, Gary ordered him out of the truck and declared him fired.

Then he stormed off to call the company owner.

The narrator wasn’t particularly worried.

He had already gotten what he wanted.

Gary had finally been scared.

The Boss Heard Both Sides

The narrator spent roughly four hours waiting for the company owner to arrive.

Eventually, the owner came to collect him.

Gary had apparently told his version of events first.

And according to the narrator, it made him sound like Satan himself.

So on the drive back to the city, the young worker explained everything.

Three months of insults.

Gary’s drinking.

The driving arrangement.

The constant humiliation.

The final argument.

And the reason he had finally decided to retaliate.

Fortunately, the owner turned out to be a reasonable man.

He reportedly laughed about the story and didn’t fire the narrator.

Instead, the young worker was moved to another crew.

The bully was no longer his problem.

And, perhaps most importantly, the narrator had finally learned that he didn’t have to keep accepting abuse simply because someone had a higher position than him.

What Workplace Bullying Can Really Do

There’s a tendency to dismiss workplace bullying as people simply being unable to “take a joke.” But repeated insults, humiliation, intimidation, and undermining are recognized forms of workplace aggression.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has described workplace bullying as persistent negative behavior that can include belittling, verbal aggression, intimidation, and other forms of mistreatment. Research summarized by NIOSH has linked workplace bullying and psychological aggression with poorer psychological well-being, anger, anxiety, helplessness, sleep problems, and reduced job satisfaction.

That doesn’t make every nasty coworker a dangerous bully. But repetition matters.

So does the power imbalance.

A young employee working his first serious job, living with his supervisor in remote locations, and depending on the paycheck isn’t exactly in an equal position to tell an older supervisor to stop behaving badly.

The narrator’s eventual reaction was certainly extreme.

But the underlying frustration was understandable.

More importantly, the story had a relatively fortunate ending. The owner listened to both sides, recognized the larger context, and moved the younger worker to another crew.

That’s what should have happened before the situation reached a breaking point.

There Was One Other Problem With Gary

Looking back, the most concerning detail may not have been the insults.

It was the drinking.

The narrator describes Gary drinking heavily every night and regularly being hungover while they traveled to remote oilfield work sites.

That’s particularly troubling in a job involving heavy equipment, vehicles, pressure systems, and long hours.

Canadian federal oil-and-gas occupational regulations explicitly state that employees must not work when their ability to function is impaired by fatigue, alcohol, drugs, illness, or another hazardous condition.

So beneath all the revenge-story comedy was a genuine workplace safety issue.

The narrator was not simply dealing with an unpleasant coworker.

He was working in a physically demanding and potentially hazardous environment alongside someone he says was regularly drinking and avoiding work.

The prank may be the part everyone remembers.

But the bigger problem was that a teenager had been left to navigate that environment with a supervisor who apparently wasn’t behaving responsibly.

Final Thoughts

The narrator’s revenge was theatrical, immature, and, by his own later admission, potentially more dangerous than he understood at 18.

But the story isn’t really about the prank.

It’s about reaching the point where someone who has spent months telling you that you’re weak finally realizes you aren’t.

Gary used “just joking” to excuse cruelty.

The narrator eventually used the same idea against him.

The difference was that one of them had been doing it for months, while the other needed less than a minute.

The young worker eventually moved to another crew, continued working for the company, went back to school, and eventually became a paramedic.

Gary became a story.

And somewhere on a lonely Canadian highway, there may still be one trucker who remembers the morning the Truckers of Rohan answered the call.