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Over 4000 design elements for less than a penny per element!

This week’s deal is on a HUGE bundle of design elements - 4000 in total!

>And at just $14, I would call this deal “obscene.”

Textures, vectors, illustrations, brushes, patterns, photos, oh my! This is an ENORMOUS collection of cool elements that will make designing professional ads, business cards, posters, banners and more a BREEZE. Just take a look at everything that’s included. It’s a lot. Like a LOT a lot. (I’m a big fan of the metallic textures pack).

Normally all this stuff would retail for $294 (which is already a pretty good deal for what you get), but if you act now you can save 95% and only pay $14. That’s a bargain.

> Check out the deal here!

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I work in customer service for one of the big logistics companies. The phone lines usually heat up every Friday afternoon, when people realize they haven’t received their online purchases before the weekend. We do our best to help in exceptional cases, but of course, people have different definitions of what's important.

Client: I absolutely need this package today, please, it’s urgent!

Me: I’m sorry, but we can’t sent a driver out today, the only option is to come get it at the depot.

Client: What, you mean drive two hours for two phone cases? Don't be ridiculous.

Me: …

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Me: There’s 110 seconds of voiceover, but only 90 seconds of video footage, we need to either cut down the voiceover or extend the video footage.

Client: Neither of those options work for me. Make it fit. Why do you always make these things so hard? Can’t you just get it done?

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I recently did promotions for an event. The client was a bodybuilder who also did cross-fit. He gave me a USB stick with photos I could choose from for the posters.

I got home and plugged the USB stick in. There were a few sets of nice headshots, cross-fit photos- and then several... well, let’s call them “dudeoir” photos. Shots of him posing undressed on a bed and so forth.

There were 150 photos on the stick, and roughly 50 of them were these nude shots.

I finished the project and he paid me, and in literally every email as we were approaching the end, I asked for his mailing address so that I could send his photos back.

He never gave me an address. I still have the drive.

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I’m a quilter.  When people want to commission me I direct them to my policies page.  It’s clearly stated there are absolutely no refunds and all purchases are final.  I also explained to this particular client that the up-front payment will not be refunded.  Furthermore, the nature of making a quilt allows for very little “wiggle room” for adjustments.

Me: I’ll be finishing this in a couple of days.  Are there any changes you’d like to see done?  I can add a border to increase the size, but it will raise the final price because I’ll need to purchase more fabric.

Client: No, it’s perfect!  I absolutely love it! 

Me: I’ll contact you in a couple of weeks with pictures.  I’ll ship it to you once I receive the final payment.

Client: Excellent.  I’ll speak to you then.

A couple of weeks later…

Me: Here’s the quilt and the invoice for the final payment.

Client: The quilt is too small. 

Me: It’s the exact size you requested. 

Client: I want it bigger.  It looks too small for a baby quilt. 

Me: Baby quilts are usually 36 inches x 36 inches to 50 inches x 50 inches.  This quilt is 60 inches x 60 inches, nearly twice the size of a typical baby quilt.  I cannot make it larger due to having sewn the binding and washing it.  This is the final result.  No changes can be made.

When a quilt is washed the stitches shrink and tighten.  This creates a sort of mini-pillow effect throughout the quilt.  It also makes it near impossible for me to make any adjustments.

Client: I want it larger.  He won’t stay a baby forever.  This needs to be large enough for a twin size bed.

I want to scream at this idiot woman.

Me: Ma'am, I cannot make any changes to the quilt.  It’s also large enough to be a lap quilt and can be placed on a bed. 

Client: I demand a refund.  This is unacceptable.  It’s easy to make it bigger, I know it is.  Just sew a border like you had offered two weeks ago.  It’ll be perfect then.

Me: Ma'am, all payments are final.  There are no refunds.  You read my policies page and we have discussed this at length.  If you’re dissatisfied with the result I can make a new quilt, but you’ll need to pay for that as a separate commission and purchase.  The payments for this one don’t apply to a new quilt because I’ll need to purchase more fabric and it will take a great deal more time to make a twin size quilt.

Client: Then give me back my money or I’m going to talk to the people on Etsy about this.

Me: Very well.  I’ll wait to hear from them regarding this. 

She sent me a very angry message via Etsy when she was informed that my policies are very clear and no action would be taken against me.  Because all this communication was done via Etsy’s contact system all messages were available for them to see.  I obviously won the case but never received final payment and she never received her quilt.  The quilt was then listed on Etsy as available for purchase and sold a week later.

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I'm just your average software developer working at an office, outsourcing to a number of clients.

Client: Since there are problems with the network driver, we need to develop a fail-safe strategy for our system. If the network stops working, the device goes into reboot. Can we do this? Communication with the driver developer isn't going very well, so we need you on this one. We need this today.

Me: Yeah, sure. What conditions are used to decide if the driver is working or not?

Client: If WiFi can’t find any access points, it goes into reboot.

Me: Are you sure that is okay? There might be environments without access points. A never-ending reboot loop would be a disaster.

Client: We will set a limit for one reboot per 12 hours.

Me: So, if the driver stops working after the first hour, for the next 11 hours the device will be cut off from the network. Is that what you mean?

Client: Yeah, forget it. Let’s try this one: once the device is connected to the access point, only then will we check if there are access points around. If not, perform a reboot.

Me: And what if after a connection is done, the only access point around gets broken, or turned off? As far as I understand, this will lead to unnecessary reboots as well. Are you sure that's what you want?

He didn't reply to me. Instead, he called my team lead, who I heard apologizing over the phone.

Lead: Man, I got a complaint about you from our client. Just do whatever he asks, do not question it. As long as we are doing what we are told there will be no problems.

Fast forward to two months of extensive 2-5 hours overwork per day, doing the worst possible hacks we are being asked to do. Which led to bringing more bug reports from QA, hacking hacks to cover hacky bugs.

Two months of crunch later came the release date... which our clients' superiors pushed back because they noticed something wrong. They looked into it and realized it was all our clients' fault, and the past two months of hack fixes were purged. 

Happy ending, I guess? Except I'm looking back at months of useless work, free overtime, stress for everyone, a missed release window,  and absolutely NOTHING achieved. 

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As a designer, my coworkers sometimes come to me needing designs for their side-hustles. It usually works out pretty well and I can make some extra scratch on the side. Usually.

Client: Since you do logos and stuff, could you make a logo for my son's fishing business?

Me: Sure, I just need to know a few things.

I give him the usual pitch and tell him to email me. He doesn't. One week later:

Client: Hey, do you have anything for me yet?

Me: I hadn't heard from you, so I'm still waiting on a brief with the information I asked for.

Client: Oh, okay, I'll send it.

He still doesn't. He never does send me anything and I never end up doing it.

A year or two later another coworker comes to me and asks about some branding. He revealed "Oh yeah, [other coworker] told me not to go to you. He said he thought you were too lazy to do his logo."

What a surprise.

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I work as a Dangerous Goods Specialist for a major shipping company. My job consists of inspecting packages and ensuring they comply with all regulations before they enter the system and are shipped. Most times I reject shipments due to incorrect labeling or incorrect paperwork. I'll normally ring the client as well to explain and 99% take the advice on board and all is good. I get the odd customers who argues about how a product isn't classed as a dangerous good to get a cheaper shipping rate.

Me: Hi, you've tried to send this product, but you haven't declared it as a dangerous good so we have to return it to you.

Client: What's wrong with it? It's just hand sanitizer

Me: True, but it contains alcohol and is flammable.

Client: I don't see why it is because it's only a small bottle.

Me: Yeah, but if you have a look at the back of the product there's a note saying in bold letters HIGHLY FLAMMABLE, and the safety data sheet you've provided even states it is a dangerous good. It's regulation, I'm sorry. 

Later that afternoon, I got a phone call from customer services saying I'd been "rude to the client."

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Client: We sent you the PDFs, but we thought that you should have the artwork files for our project for the best results.

Me: The PDF files will be fine for production, but it never hurts to have the original artwork in case we need to make any tweaks for you.

Then the client sent the PDFs again, with no actual artwork files. 

I'm not mad, but they brought it up. 

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Client: Change the address on our website.

Me: Done.

Two months later:

Client: I thought you changed the address on the website as I asked! It's still showing the old address.

Me: I did.

Client: Then why does it look like this?

He sent me a screengrab of their Google business listing, which I had nothing to do with setting up, with the old address.

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