Pet peeves

Recently, I've discovered 2 new pet peeves at work - people not following instructions and people cont communicating clearly. Maybe I'm the only one in the world that this happens to, but I seem to have a consistent problem of people not following instructions or requests. I had a court hearing this morning downtown. Two days ago, I had a client call to fix a problem on a Warranty Deed. Problem was fixed and I instructed the client to call before she and her partner came to sign the deeds to make sure a notary was here to witness the signing. She cancelled her first appointment by calling my assistant and telling her she couldn't come. We again asked her to call before she came to make sure her trip was not a wasted effort. Of course things happen when I'm not arround. This morning, I got a frantic phone call from my boss's assistant asking what the client was supposed to sign. Then, when I tried to tell her, she shouted over me that she was too busy to handle it because she was correcting someone's Last Will (that she should have asked an attorney to read before meeting with the client, but I guess she figures it's ok for her to practice without a license - a whole different story there). I eventually worked my way to my assistant who found the documents and met with the client. My problem is, the whole thing could have been avoided if the client had just followed instructions and called BEFORE she came. She's not the first or the last to not do what we ask, but it would really make things move so much more smoothly if client's would just listen to you the first time. I wonder why people get so frustrated when things don't work the way they want when it's because they don't follow instructions.

I've also discovered that unlike some people seem to think, I'm not a very good mind reader at work. There is one assistant here who starts a conversation with "I'm doing these meeting minutes and she wants to know why x, y, z happened." This is without telling me what client, what meeting, and, most importantly, who "she" is. We have a LOT of clients, many of whom have at least 1 female involved - out of the several hundred corporate people we have worked with, how am I supposed to figure out who "she" in this particular transaction is? Some form of this conversation happens daily, and I find it most annoying because the assistant's immediate response is to get defensive and act like I'm an idiot. Now, while I have my issues and quirks, I think I'm a fairly intellingent person. I managed to survive 12 years of public school, 4 years of college and 3 years of law school and do fairly well throughout all of it. However, I have never had a class in mind-reading. I think it should be taught at all levels of education if this type of communication is going to be expected in the workplace. At least we should be given fair warning of the need to develop the skill if we want to interact with society. I don't see how she gets anything productive done during the day - especially given the increasing number of personal phone calls and the defensive mode of "I'm never responsible". Now that I've identified my new pet peeves, I'm working hard to suppress my irritation, but I have also tried to start dealing with other people to avoid the hassle. Sad that I try to avoid people, but it seems to keep my stress level lower, which I like... guess without the mind reading skill I'll never be able to fully understand people!