New petty supervisor

amother

Mon, Oct 27 2014, 5:49 am

He's new to the firm and trying to prove his worth by editing everything I do. On one project, he insisted I leave out what I thought was important, and in the end, I was right and now have to fix his mistake. He wont approve any project of mine unless I adhere to his petty and sometimes outright incorrect edits. Before he came along, I did not have an immediate supervisor, and I was doing just fine. Now, I'm ready to quit. I don't know what to do. Any ideas?

OOTforlife

Mon, Oct 27 2014, 8:02 am

This isn't a solution by itself, but CYA in the meantime. Make sure to have an email trail of your drafts, his edits, your responses pointing out incorrect edits, and his answers declining to implement your responses.

amother

Mon, Oct 27 2014, 9:23 am

OOTforlife wrote:

I'm tempted to send him an email (with a cc to the big boss) that points out how he was wrong that time when he tried to edit my work's content, and because of that, I don't trust his opinion, and that I am only open to grammatical and format editing from him.

OneSource

Mon, Oct 27 2014, 11:26 am

I would just say tread carefully. If this man is a supervisor, you can't really tell him that you don't trust his judgment or prefer to limit any changes to grammatical errors because supervisor's can tell you to make substantive changes at their own discretion. I would talk, one on one, with your boss (or if multiple bosses, the one who likes you the most and/or whom you like the most) and outline some of the communication problems you are having with this person. Ask for guidance to clarify his role in relation to yours. Just don't put your foot down if you haven't yet consulted someone from HR or a boss who can tell you how it ought to be handled (firm-wise.) Perhaps this person is a big hire and the firm is proud to have him. In which case, you might look petty and difficult if you upset him by stating (in writing) that his judgment is impaired. In the alternative, you can take the high road and make whatever changes he wants and mention, upon review by a boss, that you just do what you are told and HE TOLD YOU to make x change which is wrong. Then, the boss can tell you to use your brain and you can tell the new petty super that your x, insert name here, told you to not make idiotic changes and if he has a problem with your work, take it up w/ x.

Good luck!

33055

Mon, Oct 27 2014, 11:43 am

You have the same problem that many people have when they are smarter or more knowledgeable than their supervisor. Document his edits and do nothing with them unless and until the quality of your work is called into question. You can't change him. You will look like a difficult employee of you try to change the structure of the organization bad on the things you posted. You had a lot of freedom and now for whatever reason you are being more closely supervised.