Maybe it was the snorting. It happened approximately every five minutes.

At first, as I was sitting there, opposite him, I thought of a bulldog. I thought about this blog and this post and thought that, yes, he was a bulldog. His hair, almost straighter than mine, which is impossible but you get my drift, thinning but there and floppy but not in a Hugh Grant way, with a fringe over his brow like a young boy – which, undoubtedly, at one time, he was! His weight problem had probably been with him since birth – but if he had made any effort to address the problem, he had failed most spectacularly; his glasses certainly did not fit nor suit his wide face; his smile was as false as the latest breast enhancement.

Bulldogs are ugly dogs, for certain. And they have a problem with breathing. They have fat, ugly faces – stocky without any beauty. The snorting was a little like them. The face was a lot like their face! And, when, at the very start, us not giving him exactly what he was there for (even though it had already been stated in advance that we were going to be doing something else), the anger in him came to the fore and there was a red face and shouting and blustering and threatening. And that’s when I thought that he reminded me of a bulldog.

We went out, our customer and I (for it was someone from the customer of the customer of our customer). I advised that, I would, really, throw the man out of the company. He made some calls.

During the rest of the meeting the bulldog rarely spoke. I was informed later that this was because ‘he had been spoken to’. It was during this time that the snorting came to the fore and, for me, dominated the meeting. I wondered if he actually had any friends. I wondered if he did have any friends, why they had not, out of the kindness of their hearts, advised him that this snorting business was not only distracting but quite horrible; and disruptive!

The snorting got me thinking of him as some sort of pig! And then, in front of my eyes he changed to this:

After the main part of the meeting, I went and got him the document he had been requesting. However, he wanted to see one filled in. OK, I said, but this would be archived. I will find the last one (from 4 years ago). When I presented him with it, he asked for an explanation. The document had been stamped by the relevant authorised person within the company.

‘How do we know who did this stamp?’. Not an unreasonable question. I went to get a print out of our Quality manual.

I presented the relevant document showing the name and the details.

In Swedish, he queried to another man that how could they know that this person actually used the stamp. Hmmm. This is a man who obviously wants to travel back in time to see this happen. I wonder if a video of the man actually doing this would have sufficed? I doubt it.

Later, when I refused to have something put in the minutes, I explained that, in spite of the evidence we had provided and the quality certifications we had obtained, some to the highest levels for our industry, this man had refused to believe the documentation – that he thought we were not telling the truth.

In the end he was looking for a way to ensure that we were not to standard – or, rather, had a single flaw that he could pounce on to show that we were not competent.

He was a bully; a rude, objectionable, bully.

And so, I wrote a letter today, after discussing it with my MD, obviously, barring him from coming here. As I explained to her this morning, if it were my company, this is what I would do – after all, it’s not fair on the people here and no one should be subjected to bullying by an ignorant, incompetent, pig!