When I first started working at a business as a contract graphic designer, the director of the company (who I'd never met before) approached me. This is verbatim our conversation.

Client: Do you know who I'm married to? The Owner of [another agency in town]. We met while working together awhile back. 

She said this boldly and defiantly, for some reason.

Me: Ah... oh. Wow.

I was kind of stunned that she was even bringing this up in our initial conversation as making a point of being dominant. 

Client: Well, I don't know how you got hired here. I just don't see it.

She said this in a boasting manner. I don't even know if she'd seen my work.

She had a wonderful way of alienating a new contractor on the job.

I was working on the marketing strategy of an organization to recruit new members.

Me: I notice that your website talks a lot about "belief" but it doesn't really say anything substantive. Maybe we can actually try to be more specific in your materials?

Client: We'd like to go another direction. 

I further researched the organization and found many online reviews by people who had previously been involved, stating the organization encouraged people to suspend rational thought, included a lot of groupthink and demanded blindly following leadership in ways that were not psychologically healthy. A few used the word "cult." Bullet dodged. 

Me: (long email with detailed information in clear and professional language)

Client: Haha. brooooo that is soooo money!!!! awesome

Verbatim.

A client was walking me through the process of cleaning up and re-numbering of large e-commerce data sets in a custom, unintuitive database system. He seemed unsure about some of the steps, and parts got mixed up as he explains. We were dealing with several spreadsheets and various database locations.

Me: OK, so I think it would make sense for us to work on this together.

Client:  (angrily) Yeah, I guess I’ll have to sit here and try to explain this to you while I watch you mess up. 

What a great start to this job…

I'm working on something involving a caricature of the client company's bosses.

Me: Can you get me better reference photos? These ones you sent are really small, I can barely make out any facial features.

Client: I'm sorry, that's all we have. Just do your best and we can change anything in the pencils phase if we need to.

I was creating a website layout for a CMS. This particular software was very customisable, and without access to their source files, I had no idea how a client’s specific install operated in the non-standard details.

Me: I’ve got the board index layout complete, with placeholder images for the poster avatars. I don’t have the mod that makes avatars show up there on my test install, so I can’t put that code there.

Client: We ended up hard coding it in, because the mod we were using for that wasn’t very good, so don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of it.

I didn’t worry about it, and continued with the rest of it. Once it was done and I’d sent them their theme files, they messaged me again:

Client: Hey, how do I get the avatars to show up?

My bad, I assumed if you did it yourself, you knew how…

Genuine feedback I once received:

Client: If I sh*t on your cupcake, you’d better tell me it’s chocolate!

Client: (two weeks ago) One more little tweak and we’re done!

Client: (one week ago) One more little tweak and we’re done!

Client: (Monday) One more little tweak and we’re done!

Client: (Tuesday) So if we print this 8.5x11 brochure on 11x14 will it look the same?

Client: (today) We’re going in a different direction with content and images. We’ll get back to you.

Client: We want to add a piece of voiceover to explain something we forgot to say.

Me: Okay get a new member of staff to record it, that way it won’t stand out when people watch the video.

The client sends over two voiceovers… both from people in the video. I edit it anyway and send it back.

Me: I think you’ll see when you watch the video - because the audio conditions changed on the same voices, the clip you sent it sticks out. I would still suggest getting another member of staff to do it so it just seems like another voice in the mix instead of the same voice, but weird.

Two days later.

Client: We see what you mean about the voiceover. Our idea [emphasis added] is to have another member of staff record it instead.

Wow, genius.

Good planning let me turn a potential CFH into a golden goose. Specifically, the fact that our contract that didn't include revisions. 

What's the red flag to the situation I barely avoided? The fact that every email during the proof stage started with:

Client: So I passed this around the office...

*shudder*