He was an assistant manager at the country club, but not for long. He was a short, square guy with hair the color of his loafers: Bone white with a gold buckle across the top. Phony high rollers favored white loafers.

We called him Barney Rubble, because that's whom he looked like. Other than harassing the help, his best idea was to fill the club's baby pool with champagne on the Fourth of July. Given the baby pool held several hundred gallons of water, this was a dumb idea.

The club fired Barney in the middle of August. But not before he'd done all he could to make me quit my rookie job as a cook in the outdoor snack bar.

Barney would eat lunch out there every day, and every day, he'd say I hadn't cooked his food properly. The burger was overdone, the fries were soggy. "I wouldn't feed this dog to my dog," he'd say. Barney thought that was funny.

I'm thinking about him now. The Kid Down The Hall, who is 16, just got his first job and if he's lucky, he'll encounter a Barney or two.

Barney was a moron, but not without use. He taught me something about work and life (the two should be separate; they rarely are) that has stayed with me in the 30 years since:

Sometimes, you just have to take it.

You have to keep quiet, do what you're told and live to see another day.

I worked at Congressional Country Club outside Washington, D.C., for seven summers, first as a cook, then as a waiter and bartender. It was the only summer job I ever had.

I served rich people who snapped their fingers at me and called me Hon. I served bored women who sat in recliners from noon to 5 and carped when the bacon on their BLT wasn't crisp or I'd put only one lime wedge in their Tab instead of two, or the chemistry of their martini wasn't just so: "I told you, just pass the vermouth bottle over the rim of the glass."

What I wanted to do was stick their perfectly tanned faces between two pieces of marble rye. I didn't.

That said, I loved working at Congressional. Six days a week, nine hours a day, off Mondays when the club was closed. ( I worked Mondays, too, cutting grass at home.)

I loved the freedom it offered, the discipline it required, the money it provided, the confidence it built. Nothing replaces the dignity of work.

It wasn't until much later that I realized the lessons Congressional taught: Be on time, do your job, make yourself indispensable. Shut up and take it until you don't have to. Which, for most of us, is never. We'll always be taking it from someone, unless we're independently wealthy or hopelessly unemployed.

I worked for a man named Arthur Brownridge. Art ran the outdoor food operation: The snack bar, the lawn terrace where the martinis were never right and the outdoor bar.

Art was a black guy, who worked at Congressional his whole life. Thirty-plus years of snapped fingers. The members loved Art, but they never let him forget who was paying his bills.

I saw members yell at Art for nothing, just because they could, and I saw how Art reacted: Smiling, apologetic, friendly. It killed him. It taught me.

When I was in college, I'd come home on breaks and visit Art. "Why do you take that from those guys?" I asked him once. "Because it beats the alternative," he said.

Art said the members' comments meant nothing to him: "I know who I am."

The last time I was at Congressional was June 1997, to cover the U.S. Open golf tournament. I looked for Art; they said he'd died the previous summer, pouring drinks at the outdoor bar.

They said something else about Art: While going through his effects, Art's son had found medals Art had earned in World War II. One was a bronze star, for bravery in the line of duty.

Art was a hero. No one knew. The quiet dignity of work.

The Kid Down The Hall started work Wednesday. May he be cursed with a Barney Rubble. And blessed with an Arthur Brownridge.

E-mail pdaugherty@enquirer.com