▸ Column · Modern Gotham noir — a downtown corporate tower, after hours
BATMAN replies.
The letter
I'm an analyst at a Gotham financial-services firm. I spent six weeks building a client-retention dashboard, and last Thursday my manager, Renata, walked the VP of Sales through it like it was hers. When he said "great work," she smiled and said "thank you, I'm so proud of how it came together." I was sitting three seats down the same table. She's done softer versions of this before — always vague enough that I argued myself out of being angry. This time there's an actual email chain where she forwarded my mockups upstairs under her own name, no mention of me anywhere. I've been here two years, I love the work, and my skip-level review is four weeks out — which means Renata is also the one reference that decides my next raise. Do I confront her before the review, take it to HR, or just start documenting everything and quietly polish my résumé?
Batman replies
Renata is not your problem. Your lack of a perimeter is. You built six weeks of work and left no fortress around it.
That email chain is not a wound. It is a weapon. Your mockups, forwarded under her name, timestamped, in her own hand. Secure it. Copies off the company server. Three of them, in places she cannot reach. A record she can never edit out from under you.
Do not confront her now. A cornered thief denies and rewrites. She will revise the story while you are still deciding whether to be angry.
The skip-level review is the ground you choose. Walk in with the artifacts — version history, draft timestamps, the chain itself — and let the work speak in a language she cannot forge. Quiet. Complete.
HR does not protect you. HR protects the firm from you. Verify what they are before you hand them anything.
Then document everything going forward. Your name welded to every deliverable before it leaves your hands. Become the kind of target that cannot be robbed in silence.
She has done this before because it cost her nothing. Make the next attempt cost everything.
It always starts small. So does the rot.
— Batman
Catwoman weighs in
Bruce, sugar — you turned a stolen spreadsheet into a stakeout. Adorable.
Here's what the cape won't tell you: that review isn't your ground. It's hers. You walk in with timestamps; she walks out with the warmer handshake. She's been grooming that VP since before your mockups dried.
You're not his embezzling-partner story. You're the one who already got robbed. So stop guarding an empty vault and cut yourself a key. Take three quiet calls with people who'd pay for what Renata's busy pretending she built. Your leverage was never the proof, handsome. It's that you can walk — and she can't replace you. Land somewhere she doesn't own the floor.
— Catwoman
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