At work yesterday, one coworker (who side note shows that he's not exactly as mature as he initially portrays himself to be over time) claimed all day he wasn't feeling well and suspected it was food poisoning. A little odd that you're here at work then, especially working in the food industry. But it was no matter it seemed to have been a bluff. He didn't end up doing anything productive at work and both the general manager and the assistant manager saw and took note of it. Even another coworker, who I thought wouldn't be easily agitated or even react as much, took note of it.
Anyways, his laziness aside, there came a point in the day where I was finishing dressing a sub, and I hear him somehow get to the topic about some martial arts throw whilst talking to the assistant manager and the general manager. For a moment I had considered mentioning a much easier and theoretically more effective throw given my training and knowledge, but I had decided against it. This coworker then proceeds to I assume jokingly/playfully start reaching his arm around my neck, as if he wanted to go for a choke hold from the rear. Now I guess I should state that earlier that day, for fun I had tried to test his reflexes and threw but held back a gut punch. Almost like an attempt to get him to flinch. He didn't react.
The reason I point that out is to just state that maybe because I did that he thought his following actions were okay to play around with. Or maybe he forgot, I don't know.
All that I do know is that as I saw his right forearm near my neck, and then him starting to move towards my rear, I reached up with my right hand and pulled downwards on his arm, to deter him from getting the choke hold. Now I know that most likely he didn't intend to actually try choking me while there were at least 2 other witnesses, but even playing/goofing around, anything to do with the neck can easily become a high damaging accident. As I tug his arm away from my neck and more towards my chest (where there is less likely chance of injury for me), I simply say to him, "you don't want to do that."
Now maybe I am being cocky or arrogant in my training, because I am certainly out of practice given the COVID-19 pandemic, but I would like to hope I still retain something.
He proceeds to stop his choke hold attempt and says, "nah, Geoff wouldn't even bother with this, he'd take his knife and stick it in my gut." He proceeded to pull my pocket knife out of my, well, pocket and held onto it.
Okay, okay maybe I shouldn't have been so careless to casually have alerted my coworkers to the weapon I essentially carry on me everyday, but I use it for breaking down boxes/opening deliveries, so they would have found out anyways. That and if you know what a pocket knife looks like, you can easily tell someone is carrying one if you see that clip on the outside of the pocket.
Back to the story.
At this point, once my knife was taken out of my pocket, I had no knowledge of if my coworker knew how to open the blade, and this is where either high aggression/self defense comes into play. I had not really been watching his position exactly sinve I was on the clock and I was busy doing a task for work. Once he had my knife, maybe some paranoia kicked in but my first reaction was to pick up the serrated knife (a bread knife) and point it in my coworkers direction. Now we had two guys, with knives, and things could very quickly and very easily get ugly. Shortly after I picked up the knife off the counter, the general manager said, "stop it, give Geoff his knife back."
So I got my knife back, I put the bread knife down, and that was the end of that flurry of actions. Was I justified in picking up the knife and pointing it in his direction? Or am I being overly aggressive/hostile? I know that my fake out punch might have come across as giving a greenlight to horseplay, but I don't think horseplay includes taking knives out of other people's pockets. You could go for those choke holds within reason, I suppose. But please don't reach into my pocket and expect me to stand idle.
Was I too aggressive in that? I mean, I know the sharpness of my own blade, and while the bread knife lacks a point, it can cut deep and be dangerous too. Maybe I was too ready to jump into action so that it's not really self defense and in fact I become the aggressor.
I guess I'm lucky and glad I didn't have to see what happens next once we both had knives, but man that was a moment I didn't think I would experience at work.
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