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Antiwork

Is it rude to send someone bogus instructions for a task you want done?

There's a longer story but the upshot is: I have a very difficult coworker who wants me to do a task. To do the task they must provide me with certain info. There is no other way to do it. So I asked them for that info and they got very irritated, bashed away on their laptop for a minute, and then emailed me some bogus instructions. By bogus I mean the attached image that was supposed to show how they wanted their thing to look was just some random image they found online and copy-pasted into the email, with about 10 vague words of instructions (like “less detail”). By random image I mean it's a low-res screenshot from a 2017 report with a screenshot of a now-defunct website (so a screenshot of a pdf of a screenshot). It's a bit like if someone said “I want a photo of…


There's a longer story but the upshot is: I have a very difficult coworker who wants me to do a task. To do the task they must provide me with certain info. There is no other way to do it. So I asked them for that info and they got very irritated, bashed away on their laptop for a minute, and then emailed me some bogus instructions.

By bogus I mean the attached image that was supposed to show how they wanted their thing to look was just some random image they found online and copy-pasted into the email, with about 10 vague words of instructions (like “less detail”).

By random image I mean it's a low-res screenshot from a 2017 report with a screenshot of a now-defunct website (so a screenshot of a pdf of a screenshot).

It's a bit like if someone said “I want a photo of a really nice living room” and when you asked for examples they googled “living room” and sent you the first image they found.

I feel like that is not a serious way to give direction on a task, and that it is quite disrespectful. I can't imagine doing that to someone anywhere, let alone at work.

Edit: There was no need to send me anything at that moment. They could have taken as much time as they wanted to gather the info and prepare their instructions.

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