Never mess with an editor!

If you work in certain jobs, they hold the key to success OR the failure of what people are trying to get accomplished…and it can go sideways if you get in their way.

Take a look at how this editor got a bit of petty revenge on a co-worker who acted like a jerk.

Always be nice to the person who proofreads your writing.

“I shared a cubicle with an older woman (Meredith) who was a technical editor.

Our company had engineers who were required to submit their written work to her for proofreading before it was allowed to go out to customers or be published. They were smart people, some brilliant, but many did not write well.

None of them (with one exception) ever had any issues with the modifications she made to their work; they saw that she improved upon it.

And then, there was Tom…

The one exception was Tom, who was the one person who would come into our cube and argue with her about the changes she made to his stuff. He claimed to have a Master’s Degree and would lord it over her because she “only” had a high school diploma.

He didn’t understand the use of an apostrophe to show possession and not a plural. Some of his paragraphs would start all or most sentences with the same word. She once asked him if his keyboard was missing the comma key and he blew up at her. I could go on and on.

Tom was about 5’5″ and weighed over 300 pounds. Meredith was a runner, and people used to refer to her as a “lean, mean, running machine”. He sometimes mocked her, asking her if she had eaten recently.

What a guy…

He frequently went to lunch buffets and would brag about how many return trips he made at the $6.00 buffet. She once told me that she “detested that man”. I understood, and shared the same opinion.

Tom applied to be on a panel at a big conference, and was accepted. This was not the first time, and he already had an approved biography for the conference program.

However, she knew where the floppy disk containing the database of corporate profiles was stored, and make one small change.

She changed “Tom Smith has been a major contributor to the corporate culture here at the Acme company for 18 years” to “Tom Smith has been a major contributor to the corpulent culture here at the Acme company for 18 years”.

Tom was the one who copied his profile off of the floppy disk, and the person who emailed it to be included in the program. There were dozens of bios sent to the conference organizers, and apparently none were checked very carefully.

He didn’t like that!

Tom returned ****** off, and accused Meredith, screaming at her in our cube. She was pulled into a meeting with Tom and his boss, and she said she had nothing to do with it. The boss asked her if she was the one who emailed it to the conference people, and she said no.

Then he asked Tom if he knew who sent it, and Tom admitted that he did. Meredith was off the hook. Later, Meredith went back to the boss and asked that Tom send his work to another technical writer in the future, because of the animosity that he showed toward her in the meeting, and it was taken care of.”

Let’s see what folks had to say on Reddit.

This person shared their thoughts.

Another reader chimed in.

This Reddit user spoke up.

Another individual had a lot to say.

And this person weighed in.

One word can make such a big difference…

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.