- We knew each other in a professional context, and I thought he would be great to have around. He seemed smart, ambitious, sociable, and collaborative. I was as nice to him as I was to anyone else, but he seemed to be straight up constantly antagonizing me since the moment we met, for no reason other than he thinks I'm a loser.
- Once he asked our colleagues if anyone wanted to work with him on something. I volunteered, we set up a time to meet, and he didn't show up without even telling me. So he clearly just didn't want to work with me/didn't think I could provide anything valuable. Which is fine, not everyone needs to think everyone else is amazing, but the way he conveyed that message was really rude. Why did he even agree to meet up in the first place? Why didn't he just make up an excuse beforehand? Or at least why didn't he let me know he wasn't coming (easy excuse: accidentally woke up late or something)?
- He once said to me, in a very judgmental/condescending tone, "You're living in one of the most dynamic cities in the world, and you played board games on a Friday night?"
- Our colleagues were all out for drinks one time, and I stopped by with a friend on our way to a nightclub, and he looked me up and down, seemed to laugh, and said, "You... are dressed up." Like, he couldn't bear to say a simple "You look nice" even if he didn't think it, and he couldn't have just not said anything. Instead, he HAD to basically insult how I looked.
- A group of colleagues, including him and me, were all talking about some political problem, and I said it would be an interesting research project to work on, and he immediately said, "It's MY idea." Like, first of all, I didn't say I wanted to do it. Second of all, the idea was broad enough that loads of other people have definitely thought of it; he can't call dibs on an entire field of study. He didn't even have a specific hypothesis about the problem yet.
- To my tremendous relief, he left our mutual professional context pretty quickly.