What's scarier?

Professor V. Rdultovsky of the F. E. Dzerzhinsky Artillery Academy, a leading specialist in fuzes and time fuzes, who had repeatedly shown remarkable courage while dismantling unexploded shells, was very much afraid of high-ranking superiors. Once, at the training ground after work, his colleagues asked him:
— Vladimir Iosifovich, why are you not afraid of a fuze that threatens your life every second, yet you are timid in front of your superiors?
— Because, — he replied, — when I dismantle a fuze that failed to function upon firing, I know what it can do to me, and I know how to handle it so that no disaster occurs. I control everything myself, and only my own mistake can destroy me. But I fear my superiors because they control me according to their own judgment, and I cannot even imagine what they intend to do with me at any given moment...