"copyeditors are hideous"

At the monthly birthday party at the Physics Department, I was chatting with a few of the professors whom I'm on pretty good terms with, and I volunteered my editing services. I just said that if any of them ever needed any editing done on articles or book chapters or whatnot, to come find me and I'd be glad to do it. I told them I was an editing minor, and then they asked some more questions about that and my major, etc. The conversation moved on and a little while later, one of the professors started griping about some conflict he was having with an editor: he complained about how the editor edited his stuff electronically and how he hated that, how the editor took out all the uses of "new," and a few other things. The whole time I just sat back and chuckled to myself, because I know that as an editor, I probably would have done the same thing. Also, the professors were talking about duping editors by putting in Greek symbols that mean the same thing as another word. (Little do they know, however, that copyeditors are trained not to be duped, and so would perform the necessary research to figure out exactly what the author was saying, hence fixing the dupe.)

A little while later I was walking down the hall, and another professor (who wasn't there when I volunteered my superb editing skills) was talking with some colleagues and vehemently expressed, "Copyeditors are hideous!!" The professor then proceeded to tell the story of the aforementioned physicist and the problems with the editor. I was quite surprised at this verbally violent treatment of those of my kind, and kept walking, but turned my head around to look at the group of editor-abusive men; one of the professors in the group who knows I'm an editor and who was there when I advertised my editing caught my eye and laughed in a commiserating way.

I had no idea that the group of people who I believe serve noble missions in the fields of rhetoric, grammar, and just good writing, the group of which I eagerly, willingly, and proudly count myself a part, is so hated.

ps--If you have any need of an editor, I'd be more than glad to offer my "hideous" copyediting expertise.