AITA for refusing to let my coworker use a presentation I spent three weeks building for her own client pitch
I do creative strategy work and a big part of my job is building decks. not just putting slides together, actual concept development, visual direction, the whole thing. last month I finished a deck for a pitch I had been working on for three weeks. it is genuinely one of the best things I have made, the client loved it, it went really well.
my coworker saw it when I was presenting internally and immediately started asking questions about it. I thought she was just interested in the concept so I walked her through some of the thinking.
then she asked if she could use it for her own client pitch next week. not take inspiration from it, not use it as a reference, actually use it, swap out the client name and present my work as the foundation for her proposal.
I said no.
she seemed genuinely surprised. she said we work at the same company so technically the work belongs to the company anyway and she was not asking for anything unreasonable. she said it would save her a ton of time and the client would love it and it reflected well on the whole team.
I said I spent three weeks on that deck and I was not comfortable with her presenting it as the basis for her own work without any acknowledgment of where it came from.
she said I was being territorial over a work document and that this was not how good teams operated.
AITA for saying no?