I had an after school job as a sophomore in high school. My boss was very strange. He treated me as if I were his personal servant. I was supposed to be working stock and delivery in the warehouse but he would have me cut his grass and drive him to the airport during business hours. The pay was the same so I didn’t care.

The business was small. In fact, I was the only person working in the warehouse and the office only had 4 employees. Being inexperienced, I never thought much of it but this was a generic pharmaceutical distribution company and I was a teenaged boy working alone in a warehouse full of prescription strength drugs including controlled substances.

Now that we’ve established what kind of idiot my boss was, the following will be more believable.

He called me at about 6am one Saturday morning for a ride to the airport. I looked outside to see we were in the middle of a full-on ice storm. It took me over an hour to make the 15 minute drive to his house. I was 16 years old so I wouldn’t exactly say I was a seasoned driver.

He wanted to take his brand new Cadillac El Dorado and had me drive so he could do paperwork in the backseat. I was playing chauffer in my boss’s luxury car on a sheet of ice. I was a bit tense.

We made it to the airport without any major problems. It seemed to take forever…because it did…but my boss caught his flight and I was left to make the return trip on my own.

By now, the sun was out and most of the ice had melted so the drive home was more leisurely than voyage to the airport. I got on the freeway and set the cruise control at 60 and settled in for a luxurious drive home in “my” new Caddy. Yeah…life was good.

This particular freeway in Detroit (696) is built like a perpetual “S” turn, winding its way through town. Some of the overpasses are like tunnels because they go under streets that are 7 lanes wide.

So I was cruising along with some drug induced 70’s rock blaring on the radio when I hit a patch of ice on a curve under one of these tunnel-bridges where the sun hadn’t yet shone.

The car began to spin and the next thing I knew, I was facing the traffic that had been following me. That was when I realized the cruise control was still on and the tires were spinning at 60 mph. I tapped the brake and spun another 360 degrees so I was, once again, facing traffic that I shouldn’t be facing. I somehow steered the car to the shoulder and came to a stop. The traffic that was behind me passed and I could see the faces of the other drivers. Some were petrified while others were laughing. I just sat there in my now soiled shorts wondering what had just happened. I eventually turned the car around and finished my drive without further incident.

My Mother was livid that my boss had me drive him to the airport in an ice storm but she didn’t know about it until after the fact. I didn’t tell her about my interstate ballet until after I had been married for a number of years.

I still wonder if my boss was running a legit business. There were a number of warning signs about the guy that, had I been less naïve, I would have picked up on.

I’ll save that for another post.

To be continued…

This post was inspired by a similar experience posted by Janet.