Client: Give it a sexier background and icons.
There is a thing with these dudes asking for extremely mundane things to be "sexy" and I genuinely don't understand it. Do you actually want people to get hard over your iconography? Do you want me to ghost some bits in the background?
Client: (owns a kajillion-dollar high-tech state-of-the-art company)
Also Client: (Opens the backup PDF in Powerpoint instead of the Powerpoint file I sent them)
Three months before the wedding:
Family member: Hey I saw you have a cool video camera. Would you bring it to the wedding and get a few shots at the church and the cake cutting?
Me: Sure, no problem. I'm not a videographer or anything so I'll just point and shoot a few bits.
Family Member: Perfect. Not looking for anything fancy.
Two weeks before the wedding:
Family Member: OK here's the shot list. I want us walking up the aisle, plus all the family members arriving. Also, can you come by the house beforehand to get some candid stuff? Also, I want to be sure we get clips with all my relatives, here's a list of twenty-six people I want to ensure are in the...
Me: Sorry, camera is broken. See you at the wedding.
I started a job a few months ago. I received a 50% down payment with the balance due upon completion. Scope creep inevitably occurred:
Me: I'm happy to add these features, but I'm going to charge my hourly rate in addition to what we agreed while implementing them.
Client: Fine.
On Monday I sent the final invoice to no response, then sent a follow-up email today (April 5).
Client: Oh. We didn't respond because we thought that ridiculously high invoice was an April Fool's Joke.
Bit of a different context, but I thought the sentiment would be appreciated.
While I was in law school, over the summer I interned at a state child welfare office. Whenever a caseworker needed a copy of a court order, they would send an email to my boss, who would forward it to me. I would write down the case number and order date, and go down four floors to the clerk's office in the basement. I'd give them the case number and order date, they would pull the order, make a copy of it, and give me the copy. I would then go back up four floors to our office and scan the copy of the order to my computer, and email it to my boss who would forward it to the caseworker.
I had never fully appreciated the futility of bureaucracy until that moment.
I'm a developer for machine vision systems. I was working with a client in order to define the scope of the new systems.
Client: Well we have 4 references that need to be inspected.
Me: Alright can we get some samples to start developing the software and design the inspection strategy?
Client: Sure, I'll just note that down and we will write the scope on the contract.
As I'm part of the engineering team the contract never reached our hands; it only goes through the Commercial team. Around three months later without hearing from the client or the project, we get several boxes with the samples. But inside them, there were twenty different samples to inspect!
When confronted, the commercial team said that the contract was already signed for this project and that they were gonna talk with the client. A few days later we (the engineering team) were invited to a meeting to discuss the change of scope.
Client: What change of scope are you talking about?
Me: You stated there would be only four references to inspect, we got a box with ~20 different references...
Client: Oh no no, each reference has 5 different stylings, the scope is still the same.
Said differences in styling meant that the product had the same capacity but the morphology was completely different. This for us meant several weeks more to develop the inspection strategy for the newly added 16 different products.
Sadly to say this was just the first misstep into this project. The deadline was not moved.
We suffered.
Before I begin, I know I made some mistakes here and have learned from them.
I was just starting art commissions when I had a problem with my PayPal. Unfortunately, I had agreed to do some work already, so I explained the issue to my client who said it was no problem. They were fine paying once I got everything all settled. I felt bad for the delay and let them have the work early.
I had a lot going on, i.e. moving, so it took me a lot longer than expected to get my PayPal issues sorted out than I expected but I finally got it ironed out.
Me: Hey! I'm just letting you know I got PayPal together so I can accept payment for that commission now.
Client: Oh wow, it's been a while, haha. I'll get on that.
I thought everything was good. A week later, no payment. I messaged him again, no reply.
This went on for a few weeks. I kept messaging, he didn't reply until finally after weeks:
Client: (upset) Look, I know the payment is important to you, it's just tough getting it to you so long after I was supposed to pay you.
Me: If this moment is difficult for you, I understand that. Do you know when you'll be able to pay me?
I gave him a month and sent him a message.
Client: It's hard for me to pay at the moment. Anyway when you buy something it should happen right then, not when I need the money for something else.
Me: You agreed to pay me when my PayPal was back up. If you weren't comfortable with that you could have said no.
Client: Well it's your fault for taking so long! I don't want to pay for something this long after I get it!
Eventually, I realized the issue wasn't that they were experiencing "hard times," it's that they just didn't WANT to pay me that long after the fact.
I asked the client to take down my art and never got paid. I learned a lot at least.
In this case, I was the client and the person I was serving with was the ignoramus. I thought you'd laugh anyway.
Me: I would like a quote for 500 business cards printed in black and white on two sides.
Printer: Sure! Just let me know how many cards you'd like, if they'd be printed in color or only in black, and if you need two sided printing!
Me: Uh....
During a meeting with a relatively new client, I noticed the left side of my face was starting to go numb. I mentioned this during the meeting, and terrified that I may have been having a stroke I ended up going to urgent care afterward. It turned out to be Bell's Palsy, which is annoying but mostly harmless and usually heals within weeks or months. I told the client about this the next day and got on with my work.
Two weeks later, the client asked me if I'd completed work on something I didn't recall discussing with her at all. I asked her when she'd asked me to do this as I had no emails or records about it, and she said she'd brought it up during the meeting two weeks earlier.
Me: You mean the meeting where I thought I was having a stroke?
Client: Yes.
Me: I wasn't really mentally present, as I'm sure you can understand, and you've not mentioned it to me since.
Client: When I ask you to do something I expect to see it done.
Me: I understand that, but you asked me to do this during a meeting when I was having a stroke.
Client: That's not a good enough excuse. If you'd been working with me longer I might understand, but you've only been on this project a few weeks.
Me: How long do I have to have been working with you for it to be okay for me to have a stroke during a meeting?
Shockingly, the client didn't have an answer. I ended up leaving the project not long after that.
I was doing illustrations for a client: 8 variations on a theme. I got to work and finished the first half of the illustrations with plans for the second half.
Me: Alright, I've got A,B,C and D ready. I will send you the finished files in a second, and later that day, I'm going to finish E,F,G and H.
Client: Yeah, if you could send me E,F,G and H right now, that would be great.
Me: You... didn't mention you needed those right away.
Client: Yeah, I do. Can you hurry them up?