Dick moves in your line of work.

[Martinus]

What are the typical dick moves that piss you off (or ones that you use  ) in your line of work.

Two for the start, that I encounter fairly often:

- a secretary of someone (such as a lawyer from another lawfirm) calling you telling he/she wants to talk to you - when you agree, they connect you to the person (which takes a while as he / she now needs to answer the phone). This means they are wasting your time, rather than that of their boss. When I have to wait more than two "rings" I usually hang up unless this is some important client calling.

- the other party in negotiations sending you a markup of an agreement, in a form of handwritten notes on a scanned document (as opposed to a mark-up, e.g. in track changes, in Word). I'm not your fucking secretary.

[Grey Fox]

When after asking me to do something, while I am getting the gear to do it together, you go in a fucking meeting for 1 hour.

I've grown wiser now to it tho, I wait for them to ask again & some are also forbidden from asking me to do stuff directly. Ask my boss, you piss me off too much.

[Malthus]

I always love it when a client calls me up and says something like "my lawyer messed up my file and their hourly rate is way too high. I'm looking for someone to fix it and do it cheaper".

Yeah, that sounds attractive - file is already a mess, maybe it could have been done right at one point but now chances are it is screwed up beyond redemption and the client is certain to be difficult to bill ... sounds great. 

Some clients never realize that if their file has been screwed up, it is going to cost more to fix it that doing it right in the first place (assuming it can be fixed), not less. This sort of client is also bound to be the type who went with a cheap lawyer in the first place because they were cheap, only to discover that they did not know what they were doing. Good luck on finding someone cheaper who does! 

[DGuller]

Formatting the numbers in an Excell exhibit without comma separators, and/or without showing the appropriate and fixed number of decimal places, is something that I always take personally.

[Razgovory]

- a secretary of someone (such as a lawyer from another lawfirm) calling you telling he/she wants to talk to you - when you agree, they connect you to the person (which takes a while as he / she now needs to answer the phone). This means they are wasting your time, rather than that of their boss. When I have to wait more than two "rings" I usually hang up unless this is some important client calling.

- the other party in negotiations sending you a markup of an agreement, in a form of handwritten notes on a scanned document (as opposed to a mark-up, e.g. in track changes, in Word). I'm not your fucking secretary.

Maybe they'd respect you more if you were a secretary.

[Strix]

I'd the say the two biggest dick moves where I work are...

1) Calling for a search for 6:00 AM and than the lead person who called it not showing up.


2) A defense attorney sending a fax that they want their clients preliminary hearing than showing up to the hearing, waiving it, and saying they just wanted to talk with you about a deal.

[viper37]

What are the typical dick moves that piss you off (or ones that you use  ) in your line of work.

Two for the start, that I encounter fairly often:

- a secretary of someone (such as a lawyer from another lawfirm) calling you telling he/she wants to talk to you - when you agree, they connect you to the person (which takes a while as he / she now needs to answer the phone). This means they are wasting your time, rather than that of their boss. When I have to wait more than two "rings" I usually hang up unless this is some important client calling.

- the other party in negotiations sending you a markup of an agreement, in a form of handwritten notes on a scanned document (as opposed to a mark-up, e.g. in track changes, in Word). I'm not your fucking secretary.

When I get a automated call from a credit card company, usually for one of the employees and it starts "please hold the line while we find an available representative".   Fuck that.  I hang up immediatly.

[MadImmortalMan]

People way overuse the cc feature in their email correspondence. It's obnoxious.

[Syt]

People sitting on invoices for several months before forwarding them to us and then complaining that we didn't pay them the day we received them. "You could see that this was urgent!"

[Barrister]

These sound like petty annoyances, not "dick" moves.

Dick moves in my line of work:

-lawyers who constantly say 'oh I'm sure we can work something out', but on the day of trial won't admit anything
-lawyers who accuse you of unprofessional conduct in front of the judge
-lawyers who blame the Crown for missing disclosure, when they haven't bothered to come and pick it up
-lawyers who complain in court that 'they can never get ahold of the Crown', when they made one call 5 minutes before court started
-lawyers who lie - about everything

[Ed Anger]

Anything HR does.

[MadImmortalMan]

People sitting on invoices for several months before forwarding them to us and then complaining that we didn't pay them the day we received them. "You could see that this was urgent!"

All the invoices I need to approve are always sent to me at the last minute by finance with little notes on them that it's urgent. Sometimes I need to do some research to verify, and they get mad if I hang on to them for a few hours. I mean, these people got the damn things a month ago. Why am I never sent any that are not in an emergency-need-asap status?

[Tamas]

I wait for them to ask again

I am used to cooperating with people who don't give a fuck, but in my new role that has grown up a scale as I coordnate stuff. I understand that people have other stuff to do than the one I am telling them, so I am always polite and wait days between e-mails (unless it's super-urgent), but FFS, if you can do it in a couple of minutes when I chat on you, be a playa' and answer my e-mail, damn.

If this continues I will send an e-mail explaining stuff, then chat on the recipient immediately, and I won't care how much of a prick he/she will take me for. God damn.

[Tamas]

These sound like petty annoyances, not "dick" moves.

Dick moves in my line of work:

-lawyers who constantly say 'oh I'm sure we can work something out', but on the day of trial won't admit anything
-lawyers who accuse you of unprofessional conduct in front of the judge
-lawyers who blame the Crown for missing disclosure, when they haven't bothered to come and pick it up
-lawyers who complain in court that 'they can never get ahold of the Crown', when they made one call 5 minutes before court started
-lawyers who lie - about everything

on that level, add people on who you spend an hour explaining something on the phone because she is dumb, then to support her lazy-ass take on an issue, act like the conversation never fuckin' happened and turn to your superior's superior for the same explanation.

Last fucking time I did not send out meeting minutes, I tell you that much.

[Warspite]

A researcher telling me that they have a 40,000 word report that needs editing, formatting and printing for this mega-super-incredibly important conference with, like, all the government ministers in the world, ever, and then asking me when I could have it ready for them by. And by "when I could have it ready for them by", I actually mean them telling me they need it all done and delivered in two weeks' time. And that I can't really say no, because there's £00,000s of funding on the line.

Said researcher telling me two days before final sign off with the printer that 20,000 words have to be changed completely (and thus edited again and laid out again) because one of the sponsors came back with changes and yes the reason they didn't tell me beforehand was because they were so very sure the sponsors were happy with it.

Sponsors or project partners (often Chinese or French organisations) demanding wholesale revision of agreed text hours before a printing deadline.

Someone telling me one of my staff completely ballsed up their project and is hopeless (while my staff member has been so good as to kindly BCC me into the audit trail, revealing the opposite).

Spending a lot of time drafting extensive feedback on a research report, agreeing with the author the modifications necessary for publication, and then receiving a non-track changed redraft, which after doing a straightforward compare/contrast in MS Word (amazing how many people don't know you can do this), realising that 5% of the requested changes have been made. Researcher professes shock and surprise when confronted with the evidence. Disappointed when you explain, again, that mandatory changes are not optional.

People submitting manuscripts to me that they claim are in "great shape, only needs a bit of work for house style". Upon reading, I discover that they are written in a bizarre pidgin English I can barely fathom. Oh and they need it by yesterday.

Bored professors living in remote parts of the UK whose article pitch turns into a forty minute verbal ramble. if I hang up on them they complain in writing to the director of the institute.

Interns from other departments ordering me to do stuff for them.