I (32M) work as a mid-level ops manager at a logistics company. Nothing fancy, mostly spreadsheets, vendors, and trying to keep the warehouse from turning into chaos. We had an internal opening for a team lead role and my coworker “Dylan” (late 20s? idk) has been loudly campaigning for it for months.

He’s the kind of guy who talks about “ownership” and “visibility” a lot, and he’s always in the comments on Teams acting like he’s the only adult in the room.

Two weeks ago we had a pretty ugly shipping mess. A vendor missed a pickup, then we got hit with a last minute order that needed to go out same day. I stayed late, called around, moved staff, fixed it. Annoying but solved. The next morning my director calls me in, and says my weekly report shows I approved an overtime shift that I “wasn’t authorized” to approve and also that I marked the vendor as confirmed when they weren’t. Basically, it looked like I caused the whole thing.

I was confused because I didn’t do that. I pulled up the report and the numbers were changed, like literally edited. We use a shared template but we each have our own tab. Somehow my tab had notes added that I never wrote and a couple fields were altered. I checked the version history and saw edits from Dylan’s account at 11:47pm, the night I stayed late. He was not on shift. He also messaged me earlier that night like “Hey if you need help with the report, just ping me.” I didn’t respond because I was busy. I confronted him privately. He acted shocked and said he “must have clicked the wrong tab” while “trying to help” and that he “didn’t realize it would lock in.” But the edits were very specific and they just happened to make me look incompetent and him look like the savior because his tab had a note like “flagged risk to leadership” in it. Also, he never told me he touched my stuff. He only apologized after I showed him the history, and even then it was this half apology like “sorry you feel blindsided.” I felt sick about it. My director told me it was going on my record unless I could explain it. So I exported the version history, saved screenshots of Dylan’s edits, and sent a short email to HR and my director saying I believed my work was altered without permission and I wanted it documented. I didn’t ask for him to be fired. I just wanted my name cleared.

HR interviewed both of us and apparently other people had similar issues with him “fixing” their work. He got terminated last Friday. Since then, half the team is acting like I snitched and ruined his life. One guy told me “you should’ve handled it like a man, not run to HR.” Dylan texted me from a new number saying I’m a bitter loser who couldn’t compete fairly. Now I’m sitting here thinking, did I overreact? Should I have just taken the hit and moved on? AITJ?