Yes, he kinda paused and then talked around it about how it is his job.

But what was weird was it absolutely wasn't any kind of company policy, nobody else was quite like that.

It was possible I might end up working for him at some point so I didn't push the issue. Not that it helped... he didn't like me much at all as time went on, mostly I showed some level of independence. Fortunately I was pretty well insulated from him and his efforts to complain about me were pretty childish / ineffective.