Client: Can you proofread and edit this for me?

Me: Sure, send me a sample and I’ll let you know how long it takes.

Client emails me a .docx file and I quickly go through it.

Me: Yeah, this will take at least a week and cost $XXX.

Client: What? Why? It should be a quick edit – there are no red squiggly lines in Word.

The Client was very sweet. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that every word was spelled correctly, but the majority of the sentences didn’t make sense.

I was working on a black poster with white text on it.

Client: There is something wrong with your design, it won’t work.

Me: What exactly isn’t working?

Client: I think you made it wrong. It won’t print properly.

Me: OK. Tell me what the printing company said to you.

Client: I printed it by myself to save money.

Me: all right, so printed out the normal file on your office printer, right?

Client: Yeah, and I even bought nice paper for it but the printer refuses to use your file.

Me: Right. Can you double check what colors of ink your printer has?

Client: Are you kidding? The normal ones! Red, yellow, blue, black and whi…

Me: …

Client: …

Client: …Please forget I called.

I just received an email from a client and they used an emoji in it…

The emoji was sent as an attachment.

I work for a company that installs industrial equipment with a proprietary software interface to the control system, which is on a PC in a control room nearby. I received a phone call from an operator at a new facility in Alabama. 

You'll find clients who don't know what they're doing anywhere, but the ones in the South have a flavor that's... special.

Client: The equipment ain't runnin'!

Me: OK, let me remote in and check things out

Me: Everything looks OK on my end.

Client: Eet not runnin'!

Me: A... Are you sure? It looks like I'm getting good data.

Client: Eet not runnin'!

Me: ..... Do me a favor and open the door.

I can hear the equipment running over the phone now.

Client: What'd'you do!?

Me: I didn't do anything, it was already running

Client: What'd'you do!? How'd'you do that!?

Me: It was already running

Client: No it wa'nt! What'd'you do?

Me: I fixed it.

Me: You see your mouse cursor on the screen?  Use your mouse, put the cursor over the link and click it.

Client: What's a mouse cursor?

The client is an IT MANAGER for a major company.

I was flown out as a UX designer to help with the conversion of an industrial eCommerce website to responsive design. When I got onsite I realized the relaunch of the main website was 6 months behind schedule and they were in trouble. I asked where the team was that I was to begin work with. That is when they informed me that I was the only one that they hired and that there were no other assets available to help me. 

Apparently they expected that I would be able to convert the entire website (the one that was currently six months behind and had a full team of devs working overtime on) into a mobile ready website in two months by myself and that it would work seamlessly with their new CMS that was not installed yet.

Me: Do you even know what UX means?

Client: We thought it meant “expert.”

Everyone at the company had UX in their job title. None of them knew what it meant.

They finished by asking me to pull the html code off the browser from the wireframe preview tool the design agency was using. I scheduled my flight home that same night.

Me: Enclosed is a PDF of the new user guide for review. Since this document will be in dead-tree format as well as in PDF, the page count on each chapter has to be even as per company standards. Ignore blank pages 4, 18, 56, and 72, because they’re deliberately blank.

Client: I have nothing to add, but you need to fix blank pages 4, 18, 56, and 72. That’s really unprofessional.

I made the other changes, but kept the pages blank because they were supposed to be.

Me: Enclosed is the latest version of the document. As stated before, some pages are deliberately kept blank for formatting purposes.

Client: You ignored my notice about the blank pages. FIX IT NOW.

I'm a developer helping a company as they make an software application.  Friday afternoon, they're panicking because they've now missed a deliverable deadline by a week. They had their client over to do some User-Acceptance Testing and nothing was working.  They video conferenced me in a panic.

Client: See? The search feature on the portal isn't working! We type in this value which should return at least this database entry but we're getting nothing!

Me: Huh, that is weird.  It's working in the development environment.  Maybe it's outside of the default search criteria ranges of the other filters?  Clear all of the search fields and search again.  That should return everything, then we can test the filters one-by-one.  

The search filters were cleared.  Only half of the entries returned back.

Me: Wait, we're also missing the new analytics report I implemented.

Client: Yeah, but this search issue is a higher priority!

Me: And the data report columns don't have the new fields.  I showed them to you right before I committed them to the repository...

Client: ...

Me: Did you commit my feature changes on the repository to the server you're testing on?

Client: We... need to go.  

I was getting a client’s office up to speed on how to use Outlook.

Me: This is the ribbon, here you have buttons to send new email, set up rules…

Client: Mine looks different! My ribbon has different buttons! 

Me: Just look at what I do right now, if you have any issues with your laptops I’ll look at them during our next break.

Client: This isn’t working. My screen look different than yours.

I had to stop the demo and go take a look to see what is wrong.

Client: See, I don’t have the same buttons you have.

Me: That’s because what you have opened is Word, not Outlook.

I was a freelance web designer. I was asked to take over an ongoing website project, because the web agency my client had been using wouldn't finish it. 

That should have been a red flag in retrospect. 

Me: I'll need your registrar information in order to set your domain name to your new hosting service. Could you please forward me the mail they sent you so I can proceed?

Client: Sure! I'll do that!

We ended the call and, 2 hours later, still no incoming email. I called back

Me: I did not receive your email yet. Did you send it already or do you need help recovering the info?

Client: No, no, it's good, I finally figured out how to proceed. I'm sending it to you right now!

Me: Oh, great! Let me know if you need anything

Another 2 hours later, I finally got her email. It had a 80+ Mb. BMP image attached. It was indeed the registrar's email, but she had printed and scanned it as an image to send it to me. 

Was the rest of working with this client just as bad? Remember: I WAS a freelance web designer.