Rant: Trying to Find the Rules for "Playing the Game&qu

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I just about blew a gasket at work tonight. One of the design engineers for one of my company's customers can't seem to get his paperwork in order, so he returned about a month and a half of paperwork to me requesting that it all be consolidated into three huge documents. Some of the documents turned out to be the same ones I'd already consolidated for him the last time he pulled this stunt, and others couldn't be consolidated since they weren't even for the same part! Like he can't read the document and tell which of his parts it's for? I really don't see why I should have to do my work two or three times just because he can't get it together enough to do his once! And of course my boss is out of town and the person temporarily in charge didn't know about the history and said, "Sure, she'll be happy to do it this once!"

I'm glad I work largely alone - I've been cussing this guy all night. It's a good thing he didn't call me about it. He's done this to me several times now. He also asks me to do write my documents in a way that violates both the word and spirit of the ISO9000 - the rules we both work by - then complains to my bosses that I'm not being cooperative when I won't. Then I hear about how I'm inflexible. I've worked with a number of design engineers over the years, and none of them have acted like this guy. I'm really furious with him, and probably over-reacting, but I can't seem to step out of it. It feels like he's going out of his way to make me look bad. Why can't he just do his job and let me do mine?

Sorry for the rant. I trust my boss when he tells me that I'm not being asked to do anything illegal or unethical, just to do it in a different way, but I'm really not comfortable with it. I also know intellectually that the returning of documents is more about making this other guy look like he's actually done something rather than a personal attack, but it really feels that way sometimes. Normally, I'd say Quality Assurance is a great field for someone with my perfectionist leanings, but I'm not sure I know when someone's being unreasonable and when I need to "play the game." I don't know the rules.

Patricia