In the last year I started working with a new PM because the previous one quit, and I'm having some issues with him. Given that I don't have any experience of this kind of things, I'm not sure on how to behave.
The central point of our "situation" is that I always leave at 6pm (unless I have something urgent to do and it can't be delayed), and he doesn't really like it because he'd like me to do more (unpaid) extra hours, even if it's not necessary at all.
Why I wrote "mobbing" in the title? Because he takes any chance to make "jokes" in front of other people, trying to make me feel guilty if I leave at 6pm (it's a 9am to 6pm job, I'm not leaving early). This happened 3 times in the last 2 weeks, and it looks like a little bit too much for me as it doesn't seem something random that is done just for the sake of the joke.
Here's a quick example of one of our interactions:
While talking with a co-worker, he joined the conversation saying that my co-worker shouldn't follow my example because I'm one of the guys that leaves early. He then added that I behave like public workers (in my country they're usually lazy and they leave as early as they can because they don't care about their jobs). All of this while smiling and laughing.
I laughed too and, while still laughing, I replied that if public workers were as productive as me our country would've been way better.
He kept on laughing, but his expression changed and he looked as someone that couldn't reply back, as if he was angry because I won the "argument" but he didn't want to show it (sorry for this weird description, I wouldn't be able to describe his face even in my native language!). Me and my co-worked then moved away, while still smiling.
Why I didn't like this interaction (and all the other ones too)?
For starters, I didn't like him saying that kind of things in front of a co-worker because it was an unprompted personal attack that was out of the context of our conversation (which didn't include him by the way).
Also, given that he's known to be the one that instead of saying "you did a good job" he'd rather make up an excuse to criticize people, I feel that this is exactly what he's doing with me, and the way that he didn't reply back in the previous example is one strong evidence of that.
While I can handle it, saying this kind of stuff in front of other people will make me look like the bad guy, and this will surely have some kind of influence in my yearly evaluation as his words matter more than mine.
Why did I reply in a way that could seem aggressive?
Well, it didn't was aggressive at all actually, I just kept his same tone and attitude while replying.
When he first started with his "jokes" I usually just laughed and moved on because I didn't want to engage in discussions or in anything potentially harmful for my career, and I also thought that he would stop once he saw my results. Unfortunately he didn't stop and things started to get even worse.
I decided to start replying because I'm 100% fine with myself and I want him to know that. In the last year I've received a lot of positive feedback from my team leader, co-workers and all of our clients. Everyone is really happy with my job, even our boss wrote me an email to let me know how happy he is and this never happened to anybody this year.
So, while my reply could seem a little bit cocky, the purpose was to let him understand that I know how important and productive I am in my team and that there's no point in his jokes because he knows that he owes me a lot (as a junior, this year I saved 3 messed up projects that my fellow seniors couldn't handle).
Finally, the question:
As this is a new situation for me, am I handling it correctly?
I fear that giving this kind of reply may upset him, but not giving any reply may be seen as a sign of guilt that could legitimize his behavior.