I can believe that non-development bozos would give such ludicrous specs but find it hard to understand that your boss actually allowed it or even thought that a project that involves creating/testing a web form would only take 15 minutes (even if you already have templating tools in place).

The appropriate action to this type of situation is to make a quick note of the unknowns or jot down the specs as you understand them based on the given specs and leave whomever an message saying "I can begin work just as soon as possible but I need some of the following issues resolved: . . ." and continue with another project already underway.

I'm very lucky to have the boss I do because he protects my time and if I start feeling stressed, he'll sit down with me and help me re-prioritize my tasks. He would never accept those types of specs and would probably thump me on the head if he discovered that I began coding any type of project (small-large) without running the specs by him first.

Granted some may not have the luxury of the type relationship I have with my boss. He would be the first to tell me: "You made the best decision you could--given the circumstances" and then make sure that the bozos know why they didn't get what they wanted when they wanted it.

Of course there are sometimes extenuating circumstances (like when the bozo is the Company President) and you just have to suck it up and keep going. But you can usually figure that there will always be higher ups that consider three hours of your time much less important than 15-30 minutes of their own time (the amount of time it might take them to pull together a few reasonable specs).

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true." -- James Branch Cabell