Again, can't speak for OP, but I doubt it was intended as an example of a positive interaction - rather it's meant to be an indication that there was NOT a negative interaction. Again, those words are just examples of what could be said. They weren't saying "This is absolutely the words we used and built an entire decision of someone off of" or even anything close to "This is the range we specifically had".

I get the impression everything was relatively informal in the process they described. In forums like these, it's about looking at the spirit of what they were trying to say and get across.

To be fair, defending 'being a n asshole' is hard to do.