john john john,
yes you do have to react differently to every captain you fly with. thats the nature of the game. its always been that way. sops dont mean that every flight deck you enter the dynamic between crew members will be the same. its simply a method of standardising operating procedures so that the operation will be conducted in a safe and calculated manner. it is also the means by with pilots are assessed during training. there are a million ways to skin a cat.
if a captain doesnt do preflight inspections, i assume somebody of the operating crew does. im sure that's buried somewhere in your sops. if no member of the operating crew is doing preflights, and you're happy to sit there and go flying, maybe it's you that is at some level of fault.
the term 'standard brief' is used by many major airlines, including the big australian one, where crews fly multiple sectors together during same day. it saves the repetition of going over the same rejected takeoff procedures, which basically dont change where ever one happens to be.
just relaxxxx