workflow question - assignees, readers and what shows up in the inbox

We have a particularly conundrum in regards to the use of the assignee vs. reader assignment type. The query beyond the “Inbox” seems to be to show any content item w/ a state where the logged in user is an assignee of that role. We have a workflow similar to Fast Forward in that there’s publishable state towards the end of a workflow and a Quick Edit state for editing, which means that some people are assignee for the publishable state so they can move it to Quick Edit. However, this has the side effect of causing items in that publishable state to show up in the inbox, rather than just items where the user actually has something they need to do to move the item along in the workflow before it gets to a published state. Is there any way around there or is there some detail I am missing?

Thanks,
Duane