A long time ago, longer than I care to admit, I was working as a development engineer at a very large manufacturing company. I was asked to make an assessment of a small start-up that the company was thinking of buying. I did so and made a recommendation, which my employers accepted, that the start-up should not be acquired. Part of the reason, I can now admit, was because the owners of the start-up were pretty unpleasant people and they managed to really p*ss me off; something which coloured my judgement. That served as the inspiration for this story.