H1, of course I wouldn't condone this sort of thing. And sadly I did here a very similar story from a guy I flew with yesterday who had a mate on the interviews. There's no defense for this kind of attitude, so I won't offer one. You can't expect to throw a pilot into a completely different aircraft and have them perform with flying colours.
The only two who were exempt from the 'you can't fly for ****' talk were CTC instructors with plenty of experience in twinstars with all that EFIS type stuff.