Admired or Punked?

When I was working for a designer, I was always put on the front line to deal with contractors, vendors, and millwork shops. When the work was delayed or the craftsmanship was not met, I was always the one confronted those people. I always wondered why everytime when bad news happened at the job site, my boss was always angry at the office but all over the sudden became a nice person at the job site, I asked "why were you so angry with the contractor at the office but when you saw him at the job site, you always acted so nice?" My boss said " because I want you to be in charge, you are the project manager, so I want to give you the full responsibility, and I don't want to step on your toes." Initially, I was thinking " wow! I must have done great work so my boss trusted me to handle things all by myself." Later on when I went out on my own and I bumped into the contractor I used to work with, I was asking how is business, he replied, great, then I was joking with him "any job for me?" he said " Na...no one dares to work with you.." I finally woke up. My boss made me piss off all of those contractors, vendors, millwork shops...etc to make me play the black cop in order to cut off my future referal opportunities from those people if I ever go out on my own. That is scary.