QUOTE
I'm still not seeing this file.
You will never see it until you can see files starting with a period. Sorry about my missinformation about file extensions.
My bad. I think either Onyx or Cocktail can provide that capability. But I thought there was a pref in OS X that allowed it. Perhaps it's not even a solution to your misbehaving Dock iteration of the Documents folder. :headbash: Let me do some web surfing...
...later
OK, here is the Terminal command to allow seeing the .DS_Store (and all other 'hidden' files). Actually there are two commands
1. defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
2. killall Finder
The first command changes the value stored in the string of the "com.apple.finder.plist" in the very first key of the dictionary from FALSE to TRUE. That's what "defaults write" means. The text after that command is the name of the .plist but without stat=ing the plist part (it's simply understood, by definition of the command). After the plist name is the "key" being changed. The last text is the value that you want to be inserted. In this case, it's a string. In many other places it's simply "<true/>" or "<false/>". Simple XML text that indicates YES/NO or TRUE/FALSE.
The second step doesn't have to be done in Terminal, you can also use the Force Quit command or even Activity Monitor. As you know, the Finder will automatically restart itself since the OS is pretty useless without all its functionality (a Finder window being just one thing it does).
As a matter of fact, you don't even need Terminal to use the first command. If you have a PLAIN TEXT editor, you can open the "com.apple.finder/plist" and edit the "FALSE" (that's usually there) to "TRUE" and save the file (without even the ".txt" suffix!). Now, Quit Finder any way you want. Open a new Finder window and you'll see the .DS_Store" file in every folder listing.
CODE
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>AppleShowAllFiles</key>
<string>TRUE</string>
<key>BackupProgressWindowLocation</key>
<string>{1080, 353}</string>
<key>BrowserWindowState</key>
<array>
<dict>
<key>...
Whether this has anything to do with your problem is still an unknown, of course.
When you tire of seeing all the hidden files, just change that "TRUE" back to "FALSE" with whatever method you used to change it in the first place. And Quite Finder, again.
This is about as simple as I can make it and if you use copy and paste, doesn't even require typing in Terminal.