Try these tactics for coping with horrible editors

Sometimes you’re blessed with a seasoned wordsmith who works with surgical precision. Other times, you’re saddled with a red-pen-wielding ogre or simply a flailing dolt. Here’s help.

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He started screaming at me in my first job interview, and I was so shocked by his aggression that I reacted by being icy cool. Regrettably, this impressed him. When he asked me if I was married, I knew he had crossed a legal line, but I doubled down on my Zen-like attitude. When he concluded, “So we bring you in here, we train you, and you get knocked up,” I shrugged, literally.

At that point, I knew I had landed the job, but the abuse (not Harvey Weinstein-type stuff, fortunately) continued for the five years I remained in the newsroom. The man was a bully.

The world is filled with bad editors. Here’s how to deal with them:

If the issue is their personality…

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