"unpleasant encounter" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to refer to a distasteful or disagreeable experience with a person or situation. For example, "I had an unpleasant encounter with my neighbor today when he yelled at me for no reason."
If we write every unpleasant encounter off as bullying, we don't prepare them well.
After one unpleasant encounter, Florence Nightingale described her as a "blackguard", writing that she "behaved like a brute".
After the unpleasant encounter at summer orientation, Ms. Ference wanted some assurances that the school's services were adequate.
After an unpleasant encounter with the law Lucille Tremaine puts an advertisement in the newspaper offering a furnished room in exchange for an unfurnished apartment.
Teen Vogue gave Duca a weekly online column, which is called "Thigh-High Politics," in honor of the unpleasant encounter that helped make her reputation.
Paul has a brief affair with a model named Teresa and an unpleasant encounter with her estranged husband, who has been stalking her.
Both Wes Moores had troubled youths in blighted neighborhoods, difficulties in school, clashes with authority and unpleasant encounters with police handcuffs.
Mr. Henze's own unpleasant encounters with insidious authority figures of the sort embodied by Dionysus began early.
As a lifelong New Yorker, I've had my share of unpleasant encounters over more than 60 years of riding the subway.
Roberto Cavazos, a Mexican actor, said he recalled a "couple of unpleasant encounters" with Spacey including, being "squeezed" by him in the Old Vic bar, in a posting on Facebook.
He says he has had unpleasant encounters at scientific conferences; colleagues have warned him, for instance, not to talk too openly about his work.
