This is what wastes entire days in InDesign

Thanks. First, I do not want bullets on all uses of this style. Nor do I need a new style for this rare occurrence. If the application of bullets "confuses" the software, that's a defect that should be fixed.

• The centering of the text in this case is not relevant; the behavior is the same if you left-justify it.
• The space in front of the characters in this case was necessary because no setting would allow fine adjustment of the distance between the bullet and the text. Tiny changes caused wild jumps in the distance. Normally the hanging-indent (the split left-margin) control in the Tabs dialog would work, but that had to be in a nonsensical position to bring the bullet itself inside the box. And of course that POS control wastes another hour of your day by refusing to respond more than 1/5 of the time even if you happen to click on the one pixel that allows you to move it instead of adding a tab on top of it.
• The tabs in the style are necessary for lining up text elsewhere in the document.

I don't use the Normal style, but the inept style-handling across InDesign books has made its removal needlessly time-consuming to bother with at the moment. I've never encountered cutting & pasting problems due to Basic Paragraph. I've seen this admonishment before, but nobody has ever provided specifics.

Thanks Mike. I do use paragraph styles exclusively throughout the document in general. This video captures just one experiment of many, to work around the problem.

Also... nobody has identified the problem. I have had training, thanks.

I would normally never use such hokey formatting, but this problem required a bunch of experimental gymnastics to work around. And the "fix" often breaks for no apparent reason.

How is it "user error" when the behavior varies from attempt to attempt? In what world is putting the bullet outside the border the desired outcome?

Thanks for that useful reference.

Unfortunately I don't want the box to be as wide as the (sole) column.