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   Kim Scheinberg (kims@mas.to)'s status on Sunday, 03-Aug-2025 00:55:54 JST Kim Scheinberg

   Surely a word for this already exists:

   That feeling when you know you'll have to waste a day carefully executing a client's request, just so they'll see the result and say, "Hmmm...Yeah, I guess you should do it the other way."

   (I want the word for the work itself, not the feeling associated with it.)

   Anyone?

   • Embed this notice
     Kool Mo Di (kmck@mas.to)'s status on Sunday, 03-Aug-2025 00:59:50 JST Kool Mo Di

     in reply to

     @kims Disproof of concept

   • Embed this notice
     cakemix (cakemix@mas.to)'s status on Sunday, 03-Aug-2025 01:00:24 JST cakemix

     in reply to

     @kims Farfe-workin.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 03-Aug-2025 01:31:08 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     @kims
     Mulling it over, I don’t have a good term, and find myself wanting two different ones:

     Sounds like not the situation you’re in, but there’s one version where the wasted day is totally the right call: The client understands their request is probably a bad idea, but the cost of proving it fails as expected is low while the benefit of it succeeding against all odds is high. In that situation, it would be foolish not to go ahead and prove out the expected failure a bit.

     And then there’s the other version where the client is just stubborn and not listening to expertise, and they need to be able •react• to the thing they’re unable to •imagine•.

   • Embed this notice
     Kim Scheinberg (kims@mas.to)'s status on Sunday, 03-Aug-2025 02:34:01 JST Kim Scheinberg

     in reply to

     • Paul Cantrell
     • Wendy Nather

     @wendynather
     It's not malicious compliance

     In my case I was on a (very generous) retainer so the client wasn't getting billed extra for the alternate draft. I think you and @inthehands hit on what I', trying to get at

     I have a particular talent for narrative structure and one of my clients did not. He knew this. But sometimes he remained convinced that swapping section four and section two would be an improvement, and he genuinely couldn't "see" why it didn't work until I create the draft

   • Embed this notice
     Wendy Nather (wendynather@infosec.exchange)'s status on Sunday, 03-Aug-2025 02:34:02 JST Wendy Nather

     in reply to

     @kims I don’t know, unless it’s “malicious compliance.” More generally, I call something “strawmanning” when I create something just so it will solidify what the requestor really wants (i.e. “not that”). Sometimes they don’t know what they do want until they see what they don’t.