Yesterday was the first day of the arcade week. I'd been up all weekend with the creators, barely sleeping and ensuring we had some amazing new exhibits for the week.

[REDACTED PERSON] from [REDACTED COMPANY] dropped in and asked to speak to someone. M (staff) approached me whilst I was downstairs talking to [SENIOR MANAGER] plus several exhibitors, gave me [REDACTED PERSON]'s card and said "This guy wanted to speak to you; we told him you were busy". Without me talking to them about it, L (also staff) and M realised exactly how tired I was and I really appreciated how considerate they were of it all day. I also told M that I was about to leave so as to get a shower and a change of clothes.

Conversations downstairs went on for a while, I then used the bathroom and headed upstairs. It seemed like roughly twenty minutes had passed since M handed me the card. As I was about to leave, I approached L and M to say bye, and heard someone talking to them in an aggressive and challenging manner. This, it turned out, was [REDACTED PERSON], who it seems had been waiting around trying to find me or cajole L or M into getting someone more senior to talk to. Two of his colleagues were stood by the door but said nothing and did not approach during the entire following exchange.

When [REDACTED PERSON] realised who I was, he immediately rounded on me, accusing L and M of being "unprofessional" and attempting to get me to side with him against them. He opened with something like "Oh so he is here, you both lied to me!". I wasn't particularly visible for those twenty minutes before bumping into [REDACTED PERSON], and as far as L and M knew I had left. Once I explained this, he shifted the focus of his complaint to saying it was unprofessional of me to say I was leaving and then not do so. He repeatedly and angrily asked questions like "Is this professional?" and "Are you professional?". That word got repeated a lot. He went on to enquire if there was a back door I'd left through without them seeing, and ask a bunch of irrelevant questions about the physical layout of the space, continually expressing his outrage in an imperious manner.

The conversation went on for a few frustrating minutes, with [REDACTED PERSON] failing to express exactly what it was he now wanted, but continuously verbally attacking and interrogating the three of us. At no point did he really seem to listen to any of us or consider our side of things. At this point he was stood a few metres from the entrance, blocking off an exhibit and creating an intensely bad atmosphere while people were entering and leaving the space around him. He'd failed to introduce himself to me at all, though I gathered enough to realise it was his card I'd been given, and over the course of several minutes he went on to fail at stating exactly what it was he now wanted.

It struck me as an attempt to intimidate us (for whatever reason), as if he thought it would make him look strong, rather than weak and socially incapable. I had no inclination to explain to him that I'd been in the bathroom, and, since he struck me as yet another person fishing for money from [CLIENT], it also seemed like a decidedly bad idea to reveal that [SENIOR MANAGER] was downstairs. I also somewhat resented how much detail he was quizzing us for and the way he expected us to be microscopically accountable to him.

I told him I thought he was putting a lot of effort into being offended over something that at the very worst was simply a mistake, which he did not take very well. As the exchange went on, I concluded he was leaking a lot of information he didn't mean me for me to have or infer: That he's self-centred, not a good listener, doesn't understand negotiation as a fundamentally collaborative process, and that I should probably actively avoid ever having anything to do with him at all.

In an effort to make him stop, I told him I'd been working continuously for several days with very little sleep, really needed to go home for while, wasn't available to meet anyone, and would get him my card so we could arrange something later in the week. I went downstairs, retrieved my cards, and when I returned to the entrance, he was still being verbally aggressive toward L and M. This made me angry, but I stayed calm. As I handed him my card, I said these exact words to him:

"Our staff are here to look after these games, not keep tabs on me. Please stop being aggressive toward them."

He looked up with a scowl and, in a clipped growl, asked:
"What was that?"

I calmly maintained eye contact and repeated those words. At this, he started blustering a bit more loudly than before, said "I'm not going to forget this" a few times as he and his two colleagues left, and muttered something like "Don't talk to me about [CLIENT]" as he walked out of the door.

On looking up the information on his card, I learned [REDACTED COMPANY] is a supposedly professional esports management company. My conclusion: [REDACTED COMPANY] should send adults out to do their biz dev.