When Jason Elquest of Blackhawk Floors Inc. in Scottsdale, Ariz., was an apprentice, he had a boss who delivered some memorable payback. The pair had just completed a recoat in a home, and his boss stepped outside the front door holding onto all the coating supplies. Elquest seized that vulnerable moment and drenched him with a water gun. A water fight ensued that Elquest says he won. Afterward they got in the company’s trashy old work van (“It looked like we found it by the river,” Elquest recalls) to drive to lunch. Elquest didn’t notice anything amiss … until he started to feel a burn on his, as he puts it, “posterior.” He started to squirm, his boss started giggling, and Elquest then noticed what looked like an oil stain on his shorts and realized his boss had poured mineral spirits on the van seat. By the time they got to the restaurant for lunch, Elquest says he was “absolutely miserable.” “I went straight to the restroom and removed my clothes; I cut my underwear off with a knife—I just wanted it away from my body. I was at the sink wetting paper towels and putting them on my posterior trying to cool the burn when a gentleman came in. He looked at me, turned around and walked right back out.”
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