A comment in the margin of a document I am preparing:

Comment: Or the fr. is 2nd order -rihgt?! Mives into 1st,& and stays 2nd I between phrases*. Cn descrbie turns lin. in terms of j. if allowed(?) and move 2nd tr. to 3/4 - maybe?! So fr in 2 takes h. for 3, and j. exps! Wow! So list; j., fr. exp today/tom w-0 move together. Say this too! (more clearly than I have)

Well, it would be hard to say it LESS clearly!

I'm an illustrator/cartoonist, and my client owns a small kayaking hire company.  He wants a series of cartoons demonstrating how to kayak safely, contrasting with disasters waiting to happen. It has already taken a while to extract from him whether they are to be online, print, or both; whether they're B/W or full colour - all that. I've already invited him to send me samples of the kind of thing he's after; I can work comfortably in a range of styles.

We're at the character design stage via a phone call:

Me: If you have any particular ideas about how they should look, e.g. tall/short, fat/skinny, smug/gormless then do let me know.

Client: "Don't mind, whatever you think best."

I submit designs. The feedback is from both him and his wife. 

Client's Wife: Could we make them slightly more appealing to look at? I know that they’re supposed to be a bit dopey but they’re also a tiny bit ugly too! I think they might be easier to engage or identify with if they were dopey but charming! Let’s give them a bit more sex appeal!

Client: I had not wanted to return too quickly with “but they aren’t what I had imagined”. I had imagined slightly more caricatured bods!

Me: Many thanks for your feedback; I know that it can be difficult to describe in words the kind of look you were thinking of, and also the sense that ‘you’ll recognise it when you see it!'. It would be helpful for me if you could find online examples of the kind of style you were hoping for, and we can take it from there."

I'm not holding out much hope. 

Client’s “Vision”:

“I want it to be fabulous. When people look at it they will think "uh huh.” It should say wow and just be me. We have never met, but I think from this email you will understand what that means. I am me and it should be like me. You know who I am. Make it me. Make it fit me…just like that, you know. Is that specific enough? I think that should be enough for you to see my vision.“

Yet another "visionary", from the Clients From Hell archives.

I am receiving the client’s feedback on an ice-cream image’s proposal for a printed ad:

Client: I really like how the whole image looks, just have in mind that we are going to come out with this ice-cream Ad in winter, during the Christmas Holidays. For you to understand, we actually want the image to transmit a ‘warm winter feeling’, so, just make the ice-cream look a little bit hot, and we’ll be okay.

Another clear as ice-cream piece of client feedback, from the Clients From Hell archives.

Client: Okay, I need this to be a little be to the left side.

Me: My left or your left?

Client: What? Are you insane? Left is always left, that's just the laws of physics.

Me: Please, show a left.

The client shows a left sign.

Me: Now turn around. Okay, now show a left.

The client starts showing and suddenly stops. He literally turns himself around like ten times and is shocked about this finding.

I'm collaborating on a scientific writing project with three other authors. Writing has been pretty rocky so far because one of the major collaborators is an objectively terrible writer.

Sections they've written that are meant to be highly technical are written as a meandering stream of consciousness full of incomplete sentences and off-putting juxtapositions of unnecessary jargon with an informal conversational tone:

Example: "A spectrally Φ-reweighted helix-referenced free energy perturbation summation, so to speak."

They have made "revisions" to parts I've written that introduced grammatical errors, misused words, and run-on sentences.

Unfortunately, due to the circumstances of the project, this collaborator is the first author of the work. The rest of us have too much professional decorum for our own good and haven't told them how much their writing sucks.

After giving a client his requested site design, he made it clear he wasn’t pleased.

Me: But that’s what you asked for…

Client: Yeah, but I meant that figuratively.

Me: So you don’t want it to look like this?

Client: No, I do. Just think of the site design as a metaphor of a real website.

Me: What?

A "what does that even mean?" from the Clients From Hell archives.

Client: Instead of edits or comments, I’ve just drawn sad faces in places where I don’t like the copy.

Client: Let’s hallow the logo, it is not popping.

He eventually clarified that this meant a white outer glow (“halo,” I guess). Problem was, his logo was already on a white background and therefore an outer glow would be invisible.

He insisted I was wrong, so I renamed the original proof and sent it to him. He loved it, and he requested that I destroy the “previous, inferior version.”

A verbose weirdo from the Clients From Hell archives!

Client: You know when you bite into a really good apple and you get that great crunch sound and the juices flow strong and sweet, and for a split second the world is perfect? It’s the best and it makes you want more. That is the feeling I want people to get from the ads.

Client: This does not mean I want a picture of an apple.

An apple of no-knowledge from the Clients From Hell archives!