my coworker can’t stand me and I have to edit his work

A reader writes:

I know you’ve discussed dealing with a “Bitch Eating Crackers” coworker, but do you have advice for when you’re the one someone else can’t stand?

A junior colleague, Quentin, recently told me that he felt I just edit to edit (this was on a call about a specific project, but he clarified that he felt this way about virtually all work from the past year). He directly compared me to a senior colleague, characterizing her feedback as useful and mine as performative. Based on our conversation, I think this partially stemmed from not understanding what the expectations of my role are — to get everything as close to perfect as possible before the team leads sign off. (For reference, I’m only one level up so he should be aware of this and be stretching to take on more of those tasks.)

I feel it’s important to note that the work I’m reviewing is often external-facing and for extremely picky clients. Think of something like an advertising agency or a consulting firm where a typo, formatting error, or off-base strategic recommendation can have an apocalyptic reaction.

I knew he had issues with me prior to this chat because he was complaining about me to my friends (lol). That was 8-12 months ago. In the meantime, I’ve done what I’m supposed to: editing for typos, adjusting formatting, adjusting tone, and giving feedback on strategy. I tried to show the “why” for everything I did, but we still ended up here where he’s openly annoyed with me.

Obviously, none of it’s good, but I feel like I’m specifically struggling with these two aspects:

1. How to go about team business without walking on eggshells. I’m confident in my judgment and have the unequivocal support of my team leads, but I’m worried his attitude will rub off on our new junior colleague and she’ll resent me the same way because she has similar attention to detail issues.

2. How to review his performance without feeding into his perception that I’m overly critical. There are a lot of genuine issues with his work that our team leads acknowledge and also give him feedback on, but I worry that giving valid critiques day-to-day and/or in his annual review will feed his idea that I’m mean and we’ll never have a truly functional, mutually respectful relationship.

Is there a way to repair the relationship or keep the bad vibe from spreading? My team leads have my back but I dread working with him and have to actively work against avoiding him as much as possible.

Some extra info that may be relevant: I suspect some of this stems from Quentin’s relationship with a person who used to be on the team and had a similar role to what I do now. That person, Jay, did openly say he was only editing because his boss told him to and only gave cosmetic changes to work. Jay was very bad at his job (king of the unedited ChatGPT paragraph) and Quentin was the only person who was surprised/sad when he was let go. I’m the opposite of Jay in many ways (particularly gender and level of passion for the job) and I wonder if that’s part of all this.

Most of our colleagues are women and say Quentin has never reacted like this to them, but I can’t help but wonder if he’d react differently if a man was the one who had to course correct from Jay’s bad habits.

I also worry that I’m being too emotional about all of it. His calling me performative happened the day after I accomplished something huge for our team that was also a big personal career achievement. He made some self-deprecating comments about “not being special” or “not being award-winning” in a way that sounded pretty bitter. For reference, I’d won a company MVP award and an industry award prior to the recent achievement. It feels conceited to say, but I wonder if some of this is him resenting that I’ve found success in a way he hasn’t? And that adds another layer of complexity because I don’t want to be less driven to make him feel better.

Can you talk to Quentin’s manager about this? It sounds like he needs to hear from his boss what your role is, that you are approaching it correctly and not overstepping or being nitpicky, and that he needs to work with you more respectfully.

There are some things you can do yourself to try to improve the relationship, but none that will have the power of his boss laying it out for him.

However…

You can try just naming what you’re seeing. For example: “I’ve been thinking about your comment that you feel I edit just to edit, and it’s made me think it would help to clarify my role. My job can look extremely nitpicky, and that’s part of what I’m here to do; we serve very picky clients, and I’m tasked with getting everything as perfect as possible before it’s finalized because otherwise the consequences can be dire. (If you have an example or two of those apocalyptic reactions you mentioned, you might include them here.) Ideally you would be doing as much of that yourself as you can — but I’m the final catch for those things.”

You might add, “If you have concerns about this, I really encourage you to raise it with (Quentin’s boss) so she can explain that it’s not about being critical for no reason; it’s what my role is supposed to do.”

Also, are you allowed to reference what happened with Jay? Because there might be value in saying, “I know this is a change from how Jay did this work, but that’s also part of why he’s not in that role anymore.”

Because you’re concerned that Quentin’s attitude might rub off on your new colleague, I’d proactively have a version of this conversation with her, too. Frame it as, “Without having the context for why I’m making the edits I make, it would be easy to experience it as nitpicky or overly critical, so I want to explain how my job intersects with yours and the kinds of edits I make and why.”

But really, Quentin’s boss should be in the loop on what’s happening and should talk to him.

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