I was introduced by an acquaintance to one of their senior recruiters, a very nice gentleman in SF. We had a general discussion about my background. He arranged for a phone "discussion" with the manager in Florida for the next morning. My free-flowing discussion went wonderfully with the guy in SF and I expected an equally engaging and in depth discussion about my background and how it could be leveraged at Hilti. Unfortunately, I had purchased tens of thousands of dollars of their anchors over the years and I felt relatively confident that I could relate to someone selling to the construction sector (I was a project manager for over a decade). Instead of another free-flowing conversation, it was practically a script and the manager in Florida was very rude. I wasn't sure if he was trying to see how I handled a difficult person, or if he simply had to follow the script and any deviation was incomprehensible. Needless to say, he made me feel stupid and I ended the phone conversation about ten minutes in and said I didn't think this was going to work. Seeing that he would have been my boss, I wasn't going to put myself into a job where I was miserable.
I learned from this experience that despite what I knew about their products, their strategies, and how my skills could be used at the firm, it is best to do a refresher on the firm the night before. I also learned that if an interviewer is being a jerk, it is best to politely say this isn't for you. Of course the gentleman in SF asked what happened and I said apparently I wasn't prepared for a deep discussion on the firm. But I also let him know that I enjoyed the hour plus long conversation with him, but the interviewer was rude and really turned me off to their firm.