I have a client who is way too familiar for my liking. I am always polite, but cold.

He came in, remarking:

Client: *Offended.* “I saw you last weekend! You didn’t say hi back when I called out to you!”

Now, I definitely tend to avoid people when I’m on my personal time, but I’ll be polite if they approach me. I definitely did not see him.

Me: “Where did you see me?”

Client: “The dog park, walking your dog.”

I don’t advertise it, but my dog died in November. I still have his photos in my office because I love him, but he’s dead-dead.

Me: *Politely.* “It couldn’t have been me, so sorry.”

Client: *Insistent.* “It was you! You were walking your dog! Why didn’t you say hello?!”

Me: “It wasn’t me. I know it wasn’t me.”

Client: “Why are you being rude and lying? You should just apologize. Why aren’t you admitting it was you when I know it was you?”

I finally got fed up with him sniping at me. So, I just made the most uncomfortable eye contact I possibly could and said, full deadpan:

Me: “I’m telling you it couldn’t have been me because my dog is f****** dead.”

I got a little bit of a cursory meeting for cursing at a client, but my boss was laughing most of the time.

I own a shop making custom wood furniture. I’ve dealt with plenty of crazy customers over the years, but this woman’s phone call was one of the most exhausting.

Me: “Hi, thanks for calling [Wood Shop]! This is [My Name]. How can I help you today?”

Caller: “Hi, I’d like to order a table.”

Me: “We can certainly do that! What kind of table are you thinking of?”

Caller: “A wood table.”

Me: “Yes, I got that. Are you looking for a kitchen table, or a coffee table, or maybe a side table, or something different?”

She starts getting irritated and angry.

Caller: “A table. Made from wood.”

Me: “What do you plan on using the table for?”

Caller: “Writing on it, obviously. And a few drawers to keep stuff in.”

Me: “Ma’am… do you mean a desk?”

Caller: “Yes, a desk table! Can you make one for me?”

Me: “We certainly can. I’ll just need some details from you, and we can work up a model. First, what kind of wood would you like your… desk… table to be made of?”

She starts practically shouting through the phone now.

Caller: “Real wood, obviously!”

Me: *Huge sigh.* “Our basic options are pine or oak, but we can also get cherry, mahogany, or a few other varieties upon request.”

Caller: “OMG!” *Yes, she spelled OMG out loud.* “Just wood! How hard can it be to make me a wood table?”

Me: “Ma’am, I need this information from you so my guys and I can build you the right… DESK… table. If you’re not going to answer these questions, I won’t be able to help you.”

Caller: “Ugh, all you ‘small independent shops’ are the same! I knew I should have gone to IKEA instead of wasting my time calling you.”

Me: “I’m sorry I can’t meet your standards, ma’am. Good luck at IKEA.”

I hung up before she could try to say anything else. I hope she finds her dream custom… desk… table on her next trip to IKEA.

I am the author of this story. Earlier on at that job, shortly after being hired, I was at home on a Saturday afternoon watching the big college football rivalry game between Utah and BYU. It’s around the end of the first quarter, and Utah has already scored five touchdowns with extra points, all on turnovers. BYU is still scoreless.

For those of you not familiar with American football, probably the majority of GAMES don’t have that many touchdowns by one team, let alone single quarters. In other words, this is looking like a football snuff film.

Without warning, I get a call from my boss asking if I can help with an urgent ticket for a client who previously banned the current on-call tech. As a contract-to-hire employee hoping to score brownie points, I reluctantly agree.

The client is a tech retail store in downtown Salt Lake. Apparently, they had a power outage the night before, and two of their ad display kiosks weren’t working. I pack up my things, drive twenty minutes downtown, spend probably another twenty minutes or so finding parking and walking to the store, and introduce myself to the store employees.

The kiosks are nothing more than a couple of 55″ TVs with HP mini towers hooked up to them, and apparently running some specialized ad display software I’m not familiar with. It’s not clear to me where the towers are located, so I ask them to show me; they’re behind a panel next to the TVs.

I go to the first TV, reach behind it, push the “Input” button a few times, and Et voilà! The first kiosk comes right back up. I go over to the second one, reboot it, and sure enough, it also comes back up.

By the time I get back to my car, finish all my paperwork, and drive home, the game is over. Utah didn’t score at all after the first quarter, and BYU managed to score four touchdowns, bringing them nail-bitingly close to tying the game and forcing overtime. And I missed the whole thing because the employees at a TECH RETAILER didn’t think to reboot a PC or toggle the input button on a TV.

I’d like to say things got better from there, but next year, while actually on-call, I got pulled away from the game again, this time to reboot a PIN pad. It may have even been another store owned by the same client, but I don’t remember for sure.

Between the burnout, laughably low pay, and a boss and team lead so toxic that I miss the customers from that job more than I miss them, I left around a year and a half into the job, after already becoming the company’s most senior tech in Salt Lake.

I don’t miss that place.

We finish a garage build for a family, and throughout the entire project, the woman we deal with is a dream client. Warm, grateful, praising every little thing we do. She acts like the sort of person you feel like you’ve known for years. It helps that we all live in the same little village, so being neighbourly comes natural.

A week later, a card arrives in the post (a picture of Jesus on the front) with a handwritten note inside:

Card: “Thank you for the clean, efficient job. We’re so happy with the work. Could you send some business cards? I’d love to share your name with my friends at church.”

We return the thanks and send some business cards. Weeks pass. No payment. No panic, though; she’s that kind of kind, trustworthy client. After a month, I give her a call. She answers cheerfully, chats away like we’re old mates. After a few minutes, I finally mentioned:

Me: “Just giving a friendly reminder about the payment for the garage.”

Client: *Matter-of-factly.* “Oh! Yes. We’ve decided not to pay you.”

Me: “…sorry?”

Client: “Well, the job was completed too quickly.”

A few seconds of pure silence from me. She isn’t joking. She’s fully serious. 

I hang up and spend the next half hour staring at a wall, trying to process the fact that Jesus-on-a-card lady has just told me she’s refusing to pay because… we were efficient? 

Finally, I pick up the phone and call her back.

Me: “Right. I’ll be down at first light tomorrow to take the garage down.”

Twenty minutes later… thunk. Letterbox snaps shut. A cheque slides onto the floor, paid in full.

I still have the thank-you card.

A brief summary of the conversations over the last month:

Me: “So, how much of your data do you need to migrate?”

Client’s Head of IT: “Should just be some person records, some company records. That about right [Operations Manager]?”

Client’s Operation Manager: “Yeah, not even. Just a subset of that.”

Me: “So it’s just flat data? Like one row for one person, no linked tables?”

Client’s Head of IT: “Correct. And we don’t even need much there, just the basic name, address, phone number, etc will do.”

Me: “How clean is the data? Are you sending all of it and expecting us to clean it, or are you sending just the stuff you want to keep?”

Client’s Head of IT: “Oh, we definitely don’t want that in the new system, so we will just send over the parts we want.”

Me: “Are you sure? Are you absolutely doubly sure? Pinky promise, no take-backsies?”

Client’s Head of IT: “Yeah, but tell you what, let’s have a call next week with our data guy.”

Today:

Data Guy: “Yeah, so we have two unique databases we need to merge, one in India and one in England. Hundreds of thousands of people and client records, millions of contact log records. For each worker, there will be around a hundred unique fields that need to be mapped, and for each worker, around a thousand records for previous work history and communication logs, an unknown amount of documents, but let’s say at least 20 PDFs per person. There are around two hundred directly relevant tables, but a lot more that could be useful.”

Me: “Do you want some of this or all of it?”

Data Guy: “…yes? Obviously everything. We need this import so that you can perform a data cleanse, fix duplicates, fill in missing info, sort it properly, etc., as we don’t have the capacity to do it ourselves.”

I should know better at this point, I fall for it every time.