I had a coworker like that, everyone in my team was fucking terrified of him (he was a consultant who managed a specific service). But when I asked him how to handle certain things, he was super friendly. So I asked him why everyone was terrified of him and he simply said “I just hate incompetence.” It all made sense all of a sudden and we became good work buddies.

Edit: I just remembered his exact words were “I’m just allergic to incompetence.”