I feel this in my very soul. Today I had a work communication from an outside group that my team has a “streamlined” submittal process. The purpose of the streamlining is to reduce the number of documents we have to share and review to save time.

The request came asking for additional documents for a recent submittal and stated that it was their policy since the beginning of the year (I have had multiple submittals since then and this was the first time hearing this). I replied that I would be happy to submit the requested documents, but also directed them to their own guidance document saying that the extra documents were not required.

Their response came back that the documents aren’t required, and that they weren’t going to review them, but they still wanted them anyways to just put in the files. I about lost my shit because that’s functionally the same as being required! I asked if this was from the beginning of the year why is this the first I’m hearing about it?

“Oh we forgot we were now requesting them.”