Client: We have a meeting next Wednesday to solidify the theme.
Me: Okay. When is the deadline for the ad?
Client: Yesterday. Can you come up with something and send it? I just sent you the specs.
Me: You want me to create an ad that was due yesterday with a theme that won’t be decided until next week?
Client: Yes
Me: No.
Yet more expectations of time travel, from the Clients From Hell archives.
I worked at a bakery in a thrift store. The owner, a multi-millionaire, came in one day.
Owner: Go into the employee breakroom and unscrew the lightbulb in the employee fridge. It will save me money!
Client: "What?! What do you mean you haven't even started yet? A brief? A brief is just a courtesy!"
Reply from a client when we informed them that we hadn't started - let alone finished - a highly complex digital tool they needed as we hadn't been briefed on it. The first we heard of it was a week before when they casually said 'oh by the way, we need a new digital tool' at the end of a conversation about something else and we said 'great, happy to look into this, let's set up a briefing'.
I did marketing campaigns for a small company. The company barely had any money but did have a boss who thought he could get everything because he owned the world. One time, I had to launch and maintain a Facebook page for one of their products, while he kept me busy with a million other things. I was the only one who did marketing because the boss didn't (and couldn't) invest in more manpower.
Boss: Do something that will get us more likes for our product page on Facebook. Also, we have no budget.
I did the best I could in the little time I had without money for an ad campaign. That meant doing everything by hand, from liking other pages and researching, to commenting on postings that could be of interest to us, to sending out dozens of PMs and emails, trying to get peoples' attention.
A few weeks later, we had the first revision of the project.
Boss: Why do we only have a few hundred likes on Facebook? [Competitor] has several thousand!
Helpful Employee: Maybe it's because [Competitor] has two people working full-time on the same stuff [My Name] does in a quarter of the time because you won't pay him more, as well as a budget of several thousand Euros whereas we have none?
The boss huffed and puffed and left the table, mumbling something about the competitor having several thousand likes and why he can't have that.
I'm glad I stopped working for them and cut contact (except for [Helpful Employee], who's still a friend of mine).
Client: I don’t need it urgently, by the end of the day should be fine.
This is at the end of a client outline for a highly detailed engineering plan that will contain electrical utilities, security camera lines, fibre optic cables, and the like.
Another totally reasonable timeline, from the Clients From Hell archives.
Client: I need that brochure TODAY.
Me: I’m sorry, but your deadline is two weeks from now. I have four other projects due this weekend.
Client: But I’m giving you a deadline NOW.
Me: It’s not feasible to meet it, I’m sorry.
Client: Fine! I’m taking your paycheque to hire someone else to do it.
Me: Well, that’s your right.
Client: Do you know anyone who can? Preferably for less than you were.
Another "the world revolves around me" client, from the Clients From Hell archives.
I'm designing a website. The client sends me a whole load of photographs that are dreadful; they're 200px by 200px, and badly taken. We advise them to get a professional photographer in to do some decent shots, preferably in a studio.
We get a bunch of really bad photographs of people against a white wall somewhere in the office.
Client: These photos look awful, and the people look awful in them. Can you do something in Photoshop?
Me: No, not really, because they're just bad photos. You need good photography of these people.
Client: But can you change stuff. Can you change the photos?
Me: We could, but they'd be better photos of other people, not these people.
Client: You should have indicated a problem with the app sooner.
Me: It was only just made available to me to launch. As soon as I saw the problem, I flagged it.
Client: But you should have looked for a problem sooner.
Me: I just saw it for the first time. I wasn’t involved with the project until now. You just hired me.
Client: That’s not true - I sent you an e-mail three months ago about it. Where I said I found someone to make the app at a lower price. Remember?
Me: I think so. How’d that work out?
Another client who needs a time machine, from the Clients From Hell archives.
A couple of months ago, a client asked me to put an image on his website that he scanned from an 8" x 10" photo. After I added it to the site:
Client: The picture isn't the size I sent you!
Me: The width of a web page and the images on it will change depending on the size of the device it's viewed on.
He didn't understand, so I told him:
Me: Pretend the website is a window and a three-inch-wide cell phone is the open hole waiting for the window.
His solution?
Client: "Then you make the hole bigger!"
Me: "You can't change the size of a cell phone."
Client: "You're the web designer; just make it work!"
Well, I couldn't make it work, so he hired someone else who couldn't make it work, either, because his new website was up for a week and now it's gone. I think he's searching for a magician, not a web designer!
A client had two minutes of footage of a crowded beach for a commercial, with more than 20 people walking around, swimming, and sunbathing, with umbrellas, towels and other stuff littering the sand.
Client: We decided that the beach should be empty, so we need you to delete everything in the scene except the sand and the sea.
Me: Wouldn’t it be easier to go there again and shoot it while no one is there?
Client: No we need this right now.
Another "why buy a wheel when we can reinvent it!" moment, from the Clients From Hell archives.