You thought you were in a room with a nice friendly dog, all of the sudden the dog starts pacing and staring at you menacingly. You've found yourself in a bad situation for sure, but you should not consider how you tolerate a scary dog for any extended period of time. In the situation you can exit the room, get mauled, fight back and kill/incapacitate the dog. The grandparents comment applies only when there is an existing power balance in the engineers favor, if you don't put that power balance into place then their advice need not apply. Fuck your manager, if you do wind up fired let it roll off your back there was nothing you could do.
