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My busy is more busy than your busy!

Our company CEO has a business partner who often comes into the office and demands we do small, but frequent projects for him. None of these jobs are properly scheduled in, and we often have little or no warning to plan around them.

The team and I have full schedules, and somehow have to squeeze his demands in around our scheduled/paid work. It’s very disruptive, but we make time for him as our CEO considers this work top priority.

One project involved the setup of a small 5-page website. Despite our busy workload and with a degree of compromise, we got it done. When we finally hand it over for him to populate (via the CMS), we get the following response:

Client: Don’t you know I have a busy schedule? I don’t have time to populate this site!

Pure Gold.

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I didn’t pay your invoice… or did I? No, I didn’t.

Client: Re: Bill XXXXX from YYYYY is due. This has been paid, maybe you should check your bank account before sending this!

Me: Sorry for any confusion, as I previously emailed we have moved to a new automated system this month. I’ll look into it.

This system takes a feed directly from our bank and automatically sends reminder emails when invoices are overdue.

I have double-checked our bank just now and the system is correct. This invoice has not been paid.

So not only has this client not paid me, but he also tried to make me feel bad about it.

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The bundle of bundles! 26 best-selling bundles for $21!

This week's deal is some kind of giant, mutant MEGA deal, created from 26 other popular bundles at less than a dollar apiece. 

> You could make the case that it's a meta deal.  VERY postmodern.

There's so much here - thousands upon thousands of amazing elements that are incredibly useful. Textures, patterns, image masks, vector symbols, vintage illustrations (including some SUPER COOL retro video game system diagrams), halftones, vintage wallpaper patterns... It's a lot. A LOT a lot. This is among the best deals we've ever promoted here. Give yourself a gift. You're worth it.

If you bought all 26 of these bundles together on their sale prices, they'd add up to $375. Again, that's if you got them all on sale. For the next week, you can get a sale on that price and get all 26 bundles and its thousands and thousands of useful elements for just $21 - that's literally savings on savings. 

> Check out the deal here. 

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Dogwalker from hell

One of my friends is starting a new business venture as a pet sitter and she asked me to "bump up" a logo her partner put together (I don't know what she thought she was saying either).

I didn't change her concept, just tidied up the lines and proportions. After sending a few versions the following convo occurs: 

Client: Can you make the cat and the dog more badass?

Me: ...I'm not sure what you mean?

Client: Well, I don't know how to explain it.

Me: Maybe send me a pic of what you mean?

Client: I know! give the cat a bow tie and a mustache, and have the dog smoking. 

Me: ...I think putting a cigarette in a dog walker logo might send the wrong message. 

Client: A pipe then?

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Shes in on the joke

Working as a remote phone tech support for a real estate company. 

Client: Sorry for being a bother. My last IT guy used to call me an id10T error. I guess that spells idiot backward.

Me: (Oh no it does not...)

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Multilayered process of densing.

Me: We only have a 640 x 427 pixel image, we don't have enough resolution to print at 10 x 7.5 in.

Client: Images can be scaled, which does not mean enlarging them, it means a multifold process of layering to increase the pixel information such that they can eventually become information dense enough to expand in size.

Me: That is quite dense.

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Source: Internet

I work as an in-house designer at a fairly large FMCG company.

A while ago, I was asked to clean up our chairman's PowerPoint presentation he regularly uses when speaking on conferences, industry summits, and the like.

He really loves illustrating his slides with all kinds of pictures, from photos to clip-arts, illustrations and, yes, sometimes even memes.

At the bottom of every single one of them, in 12 pt Arial: "Source: Internet"

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No digital stuff needed…

Email from a distant family connection:

Client: I have great news! I have finished a two-month online course in Digital Marketing and I am willing to work with you. If you build and host the website for my new Digital Marketing company, I can offer you a 10% share of the profits. And best of all, I will do all the Digital stuff for the website so you will have no work to do at all apart from keeping the server.  Your coding experience and my Digital Marketing will make us both rich! 

I have been supplying Digital Marketing as part of my web build and hosting package for 23 years. In fact, I was doing it in a previous life when I was a professional marketer for years. But I guess a two month-certificate DOES entitle him to 90% of the business...

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This conversation took place during the design phase of a typical website project.

Client: We should use the gallery widget from [well known video service provider] on our new site! No sense in us creating something new, when they have one we can use already.

Great! Client demonstrates good understanding of embeddable widgets and the value in using them.

Me: Excellent idea, we’ve done our research and can see it’s as simple as logging into your account, and getting an embed code from your provider. We will include a sample in the design and set this up for you during development.

At this point, I supply a link to a page showing how this feature works, and what the output looks like.

Client: No no no, you’ve misunderstood completely. The provider won’t code for us and we don’t know how to code either. As discussed you have to log in and set up the gallery for us.

Me: No problem, it sounds like we’re talking about the same point. Our plan is to do exactly as you’ve suggested. We will log in and handle the setup for you. It’s all in the project plan we provided.

Client: You’re still not getting it! We won’t be doing this ourselves. You have to do this on our behalf.

Me: …

This exchange continued for quite some time. The client was adamant that we didn’t understand and got more irate. Eventually, they begrudgingly accepted we were talking about the same thing all along.

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$50 still okay?

In my spare time, I create custom clothing and costumes for clients. This exchange just happened verbatim, but I swear I have a version of it at least once a month.

Client: I really want you to make [this] and I need it in 2 months. Can you do it?

Me: Let’s review the specifications and see if we can make it work. If you could fill out this form so we can determine budget and materials, I’d appreciate it!

Client: Well I can only spend $50 and it’s gotta be really shiny!

Me: Unfortunately, I don’t charge for less than $100 on custom pieces. I have to factor in cost of materials as well as my time to create and execute the garment.

Client: What? But you’re just going to make it with cheap stuff. It shouldn’t be that expensive. I can get [this] for $50 in China. You can’t charge more than that.

Me: $50 rarely covers the cost of materials. I can’t promise you a quality garment. A number of those oversea vendors have workshops and distribution centers to allow for faster, cheaper pieces. But it doesn’t result in good quality. So if you do buy one from them, you risk getting a cheap product.

Client: Screw you. I’m going to buy the other one and tell everyone you’re ripping people off!

1-2 months later.

Client: So that dress I bought fell apart when I first put it on. Can you make me one? I need it in 2 weeks. Is $50 still okay?

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