From the title I didn't expect it will take the angle it did. Your superior demanding you polish the artefact they signed you up for is a perfectly reasonable "

From the title I didn't expect it will take the angle it did. Your superior demanding you polish the artefact they signed you up for is a perfectly reasonable "play". I think where it can become unreasonable or controlling is when the superior is intentionally vague about the polishing criteria to allow them optionality in dismissing your changes after each submission or to get you to plead for clarity. This can create significant anxiety in the individual involved as they try to second-guess how their superior will respond to each change or to guess if they meet their standard. Or if they ask for "simple" polishing changes which they know full-well will take an insane amount of effort ("maybe you can expand section X show how the package performs on another set of data to demonstrate its versatility")