Client: “I am not happy with your work. I turned down another quote to work with you, so I want more out of you.”

Me: “What did the other people quote you?”

Client: “I’ll email it to you.”

Within a minute, the forwarded email arrives in my inbox.

Me: “They quoted you twice my rate for half my work.”

Client: “Which is unacceptable! We need to revisit your output.”

Me: “And my quote.”

Client: “Exactly!”

The client didn’t exactly understand what I meant by that until he saw my quote rise with his heightened output expectations.

I’m a freelance makeup artist.

Client: “I’ve been lurking on your work for months now, and it’s beautiful. I have finally decided you are the person I’d like to do my wedding makeup. The date is [date].”

Me: “Thank you so much for the compliment, but unfortunately, I’m already booked on that date. My apologies.”

Client: “But I’ve been lurking your work for months!”

Me: “Yes, but you can’t book a date that way. I need clients to make formal bookings to secure my time.”

Client: “Can’t you just cancel the other booking?”

Me: “I’m sorry, no, I couldn’t do that to a customer who has secured my time and paid my booking fee well in advance.”

Client: “Your customer service is appalling.”

I was on the phone with a particularly difficult client, trying to assist them with our CMS (Content Management System). Merely choosing colors was agony with this person, as they couldn’t tell the difference between orange and purple, yet they insisted they were not color blind by any measure.

Today was something else, though.

Me: “In order to access the content management system, I need you to open your web browser. Once it’s open, you can type the address into the URL bar.”

Client: “Okay, it’s open… but where is this bar?”

Me: “There should be a blank bar at the top of your browser window where you can input a web address.”

Client: “I know that. But where is this bar? I opened my browser and there is no bar.”

Me: “There should be a section below your ‘File’, ‘Edit’, ‘View’, and ‘Window’ options bar on your browser that allows you to type in addresses and surf the web.”

Client: “Listen. I have no idea what you are talking about! There is no bar on my screen. I don’t see any place for a web address.”

Me: “What options are at the top of your browser?”

Client: “‘File’, ‘Edit’, ‘Format’, ‘Table’, a copy and paste button, my fonts… None of this URL business!”

Me: “Wait, are you in Microsoft Word?”

Client: “Yeah, why?”

A client calls to complain about a website that was pushed out months ago. Trying to diagnose the problem, I notice that the overall layout has changed.

Client: “No, the layout has not been changed. Everything’s just been better arranged.”

Me: “Well, the new layout seems to be the issue.”

Client: “What new layout?”

My friend was some unfortunate designer’s client a while back.

Client: “Hey, I just downloaded Photoshop. How do I save jpegs as .eps in good quality? We need to get our company clothes printed ASAP, and the printer doesn’t accept jpegs.”

Me: “Don’t you have your logo in vector format?”

Client: “The old one’s vectorized, but we only have small jpegs of the new one. Also, I made some adjustments. Photoshop lets me save it as .eps, but it looks kind of bad.”

Me: “You can’t do that. Why not contact the agency that made the logo?”

Client: “That was a few months ago, and we haven’t exactly paid them yet.”