Client: “My computer is frozen!”
Me: “What screen is it frozen on?”
Client: “The first screen, where it says, ‘Push Ctrl+Alt+Del to log in.’ I can move the mouse around, but when I push those buttons, it does nothing”
Me: “Is your keyboard plugged in?”
Client: “No, it’s a wireless keyboard.”
Me: “Have you changed the batteries?”
Client: “This thing takes batteries?! I thought it ran on satellite power.”
Client: “Can you make it so when people land on our website, it’s, like, all black with stars coming out of the screen all ‘whoosh, whoosh’—” *does the action* “—like in that screensaver?”
Me: “…”
Client: “With the music from Star Wars.”
Me: “…”
Client: “And it does that for, like, a minute, and then it stops and they have to click on one of the stars.”
Me: “Any star?”
Client: “No. No. A specific star that they’ll have to find. Make it different every time.”
Me: “…”
Client: “Then, when they find the right star, there’s like a massive explosion that the site spins out of—” *does the action* “—like in the old Batman series.”
Me: “For your company site?”
Client: “Yeah.”
Me: “The company that cleans up addicts’ used needles from parks and playgrounds?”
Client: “Yeah.”
Me: “No.”
Client: “…well, you’re not much fun.”
Client: “The word ‘Blog’ sounds too alien.” *Does an impression with his arms* “‘Glip glorp zoop blog, I am a martian,’ if you know what I mean.”
Me: “Um, I guess I do, sure.”
Client: “There’s no humanity in it! I want people to associate our company with humanness.”
Me: “So, you want to remove the blog page?”
Client: “No, keep it. But can we call it our ‘Feelings And Opinions Space,’ instead?”
Me: “Sure. The only thing is, it’s on a ‘Blogspot’ subdomain.”
Client: “Just change that to a ‘FeelingsAndOpinionsSpot’ sub-dome-whatever. Easy, see? You just have to start thinking like me!”
Me: “…”
Client: “Could you email me the first page of your proposal again? I printed it all out, but then I wrote all over the first page, so I need you to send it again.”
Me: “Do you still have the PDF file you printed it from?”
Client: “Yes.”
Me: “So, maybe you could just print that file again?”
Client: “Oh. You can do that?! Since when?”
Client: “When I Google ‘Open Sundays’, our company website doesn’t even come up.”
Me: “Why would it?”
Client: “Uh, because we’re open Sundays. Obviously.”
Me: “There are a lot of places that are open on Sunday, though.”
Client: “But I wasn’t looking for those other sites; I was looking for ours. Are you even paying attention?!”
Clients From Hell
