I am doing a charity gig producing caricatures. A lady walks up, looks at my art, mumbles something, and then asks me:

Lady: “Do you do private commissions?”

Me: “Yes, I do.” 

Lady: “What do you need?”

Me: “All I need is a photo and some information about the person you want to be caricatured.”

Lady: “I have a photo of my husband in the car. I can go and get it if you like.”

Me: “That would be great.”

She heads off, and twenty minutes later, she comes back with a photo.

The photo is of a large lake with a tiny boat in the middle. And I mean tiny; you can barely make it out. After a while, I say:

Me: “So, where is your husband?”

Lady: “He’s in the boat.”

I look again. And there, measuring approximately 2.5 pixels in width and 3.7 in height, is — I presume — her husband. Fishing.

Me: “I think I’m going to need a slightly clearer photo.”

She takes it back and looks at it.

Lady: “Actually, you’ll probably want one of him facing you, too. He’s got his back to you in this one.”

I nodded slowly and she walked off.

I work for a design agency.

Contact: “The client is unhappy. People are not taking part in the campaign. We are not sure we can pay you since we are not sure they will pay us.”

Me: “What does this have to do with me? Everything I was responsible for works just fine.”

Contact: “Look, we’re not too happy about it, either, but that’s life.”

Before I retired, I worked as a maintenance carpenter at a very nice community college in Southern California. I was also writing and drawing a comic strip about windsurfing that had been accepted by several publications, albeit briefly. I never made much money; I was doing it for fun.

One day at work, I was walking past a drawing class being taught outside by an instructor I was friendly with. He saw me and shouted out:

Instructor: “Hey, [My Name], maybe you should take my class and learn how to draw!”

Me: *Shouting back* “Well, [Instructor], my art has been published in four magazines on two continents. I think I’m doing okay. How about you?”

All his students turned to see what he would reply with. Silence.

Our brief was to shorten and re-edit some product advertisement videos that our client got from another media company and wasn’t too happy with. The clips were poorly made and they had nothing to do with the product itself: they featured a horribly rude, smug, and singing man who threw insults at his subordinates and tried to pass them off as “learning opportunities” or “jokes.” 

Me: “We’ve re-edited the videos as you asked us to. We shortened the two videos down and combined them into one shorter and snappier version, with more focus on the product and less on the jokes.”

Client: “But I told you I wanted two separate videos of the two products! You can’t even see the product clearly in there.”

Me: “That was not what you told us at our last meeting — not to mention that you confirmed the debrief we sent you, where we clearly stated all the details of the project.”

Client: “You are wrong; I never did that! I clearly said I wanted two videos.”

Me: “But we have a written confirmation that we should start working following the debrief email.”

Client: “No, you don’t. And you didn’t deliver them in time, anyway. And I don’t want to waste my valuable time by having a long discussion about this.”

Me: “We tried to call and email you for a meeting, but you didn’t reply for weeks.”

The client looked very angry and started going through his mail. After a while, he asked us to forward the email conversation again because he couldn’t find it. A couple of minutes later, he looked up.

Client: “I don’t see me confirming anything in here.”

Me: “Here: you sent us the videos and told us to get to work as soon as possible, in reply to our debrief. Why would you do that and not say anything if you didn’t agree with the debrief?”

Client: “Yes, I told you to start, but I didn’t confirm it! I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

I’ve been designing a booth for a client that produces cement mixers. The entire booth was supposed to be related to cement in some way, so I made it look like the inside of a cement mixer.

The client was ecstatic. In the centre of the booth was a big round desk whose top was supposed to be blue because their logo was blue.

The client came to see the final draft.

Client: “I love it. It’s just, the blue on the table — can it be more of a yellowish blue?”

Me: “You mean green?”

Client: “No! I don’t mean green! I mean more of a yellowish blue!”

I opened the color palette and asked him to point to the color he wanted. His finger pointed at a light green.

Me: “That is green.”

Client: “NO! It is not! It is yellowish blue!”

So, I turned the tabletop “yellowish blue.” Of course, the next day, I got the request to bring the table back to its original color.