"Fights" doesn't do it justice. I grew up in a major city in the American South. I had friends that got involved with gangs, and caught my fair share of beatdowns - first for hanging around the wrong set, and later when I would try to help them get out. My parents were in prison and I ran away from the foster system due to abuse (some of the minor burns). Being a homeless teenager trying to avoid getting sent back into the system got me on the wrong side of the PD a lot - I'd be walking in a bad part of town when they'd try to stop me because they'd think I was buying or selling drugs. I'd be cagey, wouldn't tell them my name, try to keep going on my way. I got rolled maybe three or four times that way - no arrest, just a shit-kicking, which honestly at the time was the more preferable outcome. The gunshot and some of the cuts come from being the victim of muggings and robberies. The major burns and cuts mostly come from working under-the-table factory jobs with substandard (or sometimes nonexistent) safety equipment and procedures, though a few of them are from getting hit by a drunk driver.

I've had a fair number of those dramatic changes in reception between phone/email and in-person, but never this dramatic to the point where they appeared actively hostile. One time, I was interested in a secretarial job at a law firm (I majored in Criminal Justice, wanted to go to law school before I got sick). I had email correspondance with them for awhile, they asked me to come in to interview, and then...asked me literally no questions, just told me about the firm, their clients, and told me they'd get back to me. They did, and said they'd found someone else, but a month later the job was still listed on their website.

Work-from-home is theoretically a possibility, and I honestly wouldn't turn anything down at this point (though I got a call from an industrial printing place about an hour ago and will be going in in the morning to interview).