I do writing commissions as a side job. The following is taken from a chat log after someone pings me for a commission slot:

Client: “Hey, so you do stories, right? How much do you charge?”

Me: “As my TOS states, the usual rate is [price] for every thousand words, though if you’re after something shorter, like a poem, we can negotiate a reduced price. I don’t charge extra if I go a bit over the agreed-on word limit.”

Client: “No, I’m after a story. Take a look.”

I get sent a document containing a multi-paragraph outline.

Me: “I see. Wow, this is quite an in-depth premise.”

Client: “Yeah, it’s something very personal and dear to me. I’ve been trying and trying to find someone to do it. Not many people want adult stuff like this.”

Me: “Well, I’m honored you deem me up to the task. And no worries that it’s adult-oriented, I’ve been asked to do way weirder stuff. What kind of budget or word total did you have in mind?”

Client: “What you just said. [Price] for a thousand words.”

I can see we’re going to have a problem. The story outline by itself totals around 1,265 words, features a cast of ten different characters, and ten very long, detailed scenes, each of which involves the entire cast. The last scene also involves a time skip, showing what the cast is getting up to several decades later in life, along with several paragraphs detailing what happened to each of them in the intervening years.

Me: “Um, I do apologize, but that’s really not going to be enough for this sort of epic yarn. You’re going to want a lot more for this.”

Client: “What do you mean? You said [Price] for a thousand words!”

Me: “Let me show you something.”

I sent over one of my sample stories.

Me: “That’s what just over a thousand words look like.”

Client: “What? That’s nothing! That’s all I get for [price]?!”

Me: “I mean, I COULD technically squeeze your story down to a thousand words, but it would involve reducing the scenes to about two to three sentences each, eliminating all the dialogue, and giving each character maybe five or so words for their descriptions. That MIGHT leave me just enough to quickly summarize this time skip you have at the end. If you can give me a second, I might be able to come up with an alternative.”

Client: “This is insane! I don’t have a lot of money! I thought you could do this! It’s extremely dear to my heart, so it has to be done right!

Me: “And I assure you I can do it right, but this is a very long, detailed premise. I mean, you’re basically asking me to write a novel. I’d estimate it’d need about 85,000 words to properly capture everything mentioned. I accept that it’ll get pretty pricey, so here’s what I recommend: I’ll do a breakdown of how many words I think each scene will require and what that will cost. Instead of paying for the whole thing at once, you can pay for each scene as you’re able to. It’ll take longer, but it’ll be far more affordable.”

Client: “I said I don’t have a lot of money! Fine, send me the breakdown.”

I do so and hear nothing more for an hour or so.

Client: “So the first scene would only be [basically a slight increase from my base rate]?”

Me: “Yep. If I can dedicate around two thousand or so words to that one part alone, I can really do something beautiful with it. And again, I don’t charge extra if I end up going a bit over.”

Client: “Okay, let me see if I can afford that.”

The chat log goes silent for the rest of the day. The next morning, I woke up to the following:

Client: “So I’ve thought it over and, frankly, I’m disappointed. This is an incredibly important and personal story to me, and you’re not only trying to bleed me of every penny my parents give me but also make me wait forever to see it done! I thought you’d be different from the other people who’ve laughed and turned me down, but no, you’re even worse! Thanks for wasting my f****** time, dip-s***!”

Me: “Then I’m sorry we couldn’t reach an agreement on this. If I may ask one thing: that bit about your parents giving you money… and also the fact that this very personal story of yours can basically be summarized as a guy, who I notice shares your screen name, living with a group of high school girls… how old are you?”

The chat program quickly notifies me that the not-to-be commissioner has blocked me. 

Kind of a pity, really. The story wasn’t all that bad, despite what my summary of it might imply. Each girl got a full backstory and character arc, and the male character had some interesting flaws that played into his development. Would’ve been a cool project to work on, but I do expect to get paid appropriately for such work!

I own a digital marketing agency (we do social media management, ads, email marketing, etc). We have one client, where we managed to get really, I mean, really exceptional results. ROAS (return on ads spent) is about sixty, meaning if you put one euro in paid ads, you get sixty euros in purchases. Basically, we managed to increase their online sales approximately fifty times in just six months.

One day, our client emails us and tells us this:

Client: “We decided to cancel our partnership, as we think we are overpaying you, and the results we are getting are not worth that. This is our final decision, and please pass all social media login, like business page admin rights, to our new guy, who will be working on-site.”

I called the client, asked what happened, but he could not answer anything.

Me: “Well, you as the company are the owner of your Facebook business page, so you simply remove us as admin and add the other guy you hired.”

A couple of days later, it became clear what had happened.

We had established a really good relationship with one guy in their accounting team. I would not say we became good friends, but we would communicate rather informally and have met each other in various non-work-related situations.

He told us that one of their vice presidents, who is also a shareholder, decided to employ his nephew, who is just twenty and has zero experience in real social marketing, to do their marketing.

The outcome?

After the first month, their online sales decreased by 50%. 

After the second month, by 80 %.

After the third month, their sales went below the point when we started providing services.

After four months, they came back to us apologizing. We signed a new contract, applied our new “account review and reactivation” fee, increased our main fee by 60%, and we are still working with them to this day. We managed to get even better results than we had before.

And the nephew? He stayed within the company, but was assigned to the warehousing department.

I’m a web developer and software designer. I get a client who sounds very excitable over the phone.

Client: “So, I’m gonna need your help for this. Imagine this! CatCoin!”

Me: “Uh… what is that?”

Client: “It’s a crypto! CatCoin!”

Me: “And you wanted me to design the website for it?”

Client: “No, you need to develop the coin. I can’t pay you up front, but when people start buying it, I can split the costs with you.”

Me: “You want me to… make a cryptocurrency?”

Client: “That’s one of the things you do, right?”

Me: “Not even close. What would you be doing in this… enterprise?”

Client: “I came up with the name! The concept!”

Me: “CatCoin?”

Client: “Yeah!”

Me: “So you’re doing nothing?”

Client: “H*** no! I came up with the idea! I… y’know, will sell it on the blockchain!”

Me: “If you can tell me right now what the blockchain is, I will humor you for a few more minutes.”

Client: “It’s… the chain of… things that cryptos run on.”

Me: “But what is it?”

Client: “It’s… it’s… It’s crypto!”

Me: “Well, this has been fun. Good luck, but I’m not the guy for you.” *Click.*

F****** crypto-bros.

I worked for a point-of-sale company. One weekend, when I was on call and drinking at the bar across the street, I got a call from a manager from a chain full of not bright people, and to compound that, most of them weren’t even remotely nice, insulting us tech guys every call like they forgot they were twice my age managing a Denny’s knock-off.

So, the guy called and said:

Caller: “A screen on one of my POS terminals isn’t very responsive.”

Me: “Is it dirty?”

Caller: “No.”

Me: “Okay, let’s calibrate it.”

These people were using Windows XP in 2017; that should tell you the condition of the equipment. I walk him through how to calibrate it. Nope, still barely responsive.

Caller: “I’m pressing it, but there’s stuff caked all over the screen.”

Contrary to it not being dirty earlier. POS screens are nasty, considering the environment they’re in.

Me: “Wipe it down with a damp towel.”

Caller: “Won’t it damage it?”

Me: “Nah, Posiflex terminals have water-resistant screens. At the trade shows, they’ll sometimes have water dripping on the screen to demonstrate that. Screen cleaner would be best, but a damp towel will work.”

Caller: “Okay.”

He hangs up. Twenty minutes later, I get another call, him yelling and swearing about how it’s not working at all, not turning on.

I head over to my apartment and hop on TeamViewer. I can’t see it on the network, and I start the whole tracing the power cable routine.

Caller: “I put it through the dishwasher, and it just stopped working!”

I said verbatim:

Me: “You ran a computer through a f****** dishwasher?”

When I relayed this to my boss the next Monday, he didn’t even care because it was so stupid. Swearing at customers isn’t professional or okay, but this one was kind of explainable.

Caller: “You said it was water resistant!”

Me: “I said wipe the screen down! Water resistant is NOT the same as waterproof, dude. I mean…”

Caller: “Well, I need a new terminal now, so send someone. We are packed and can’t go without it.”

A quick check of his sales report and table seating chart determined that it was a lie; they were dead and had been all day.

I told him even if I left right then, going to the office, imaging a new terminal and driving the two hours to get to the site would put me there well after they close, and the other three terminals they had should work just fine, especially when the time clock showed just two servers on.

Caller: “Well, it’s under warranty, right?”

Me: “No, if it has Windows XP its well out of warranty at this point, plus your corporate office has to okay all equipment purchases.”

I told him this, rather than cause further chaos by telling him that doing something that freaking stupid voids warranties. After a few moments of awkward silence…

Caller: “You better stay out of xyzville!” *A smaller town that I would never ever go to on my own free will anyway.*

He hung up, and I went back to the bar and kept drinking.

I work in visual effects. We were working on a music video when the video’s director came into the studio to see the progress and give feedback. I’m working on a shot filled with purple smoke, and he comes over to my desk and starts giving me notes:

Director: “This shot is looking too purple. Make it less purple.”

Me: “Okay, I can take down its saturation.”

Director: “No, I still want it to have a lot of color.”

Me: “What color would you like instead?”

Director: “Like blue and red, mixed together.”

It sounds stupid (and it is!), but after years of learning to speak ‘client’, I learned that they probably wanted something closer to magenta or violet, rather than whatever shade of purple it was. I added a filter to make the smoke appear in either of those two colors, and the client loved it.

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