I work for a software development company. I take calls from clients to run basic tech support, but will also occasionally get feedback from clients as to how to improve the software, as well as develop customised modules for them.

A client is describing what they want from a custom module in a long and rambling way.

Client: “And then we want a button at the bottom to generate a report, but the report is custom to whoever presses it so that—”

Me: “[Client], this all sounds doable, but it’s quite complicated. I suggest you put down in bullet points all these features in an email, and I can go from there. If it’s based on previous modules we’ve designed for you, we should be able to get something testable in a few weeks.”

Client: “What do you mean, a few weeks? Weren’t you coding as I was talking? I heard it’s all vibe coding now! I thought you were making it as I was talking!”

Sigh…

I work in sales for a kitchen and bath remodeling company. The following type of customer is getting increasingly more common:

Customer: “I’m looking to remodel everything! Kitchen, bathroom, windows, all of it!”

Me: “Do you have your measurements?”

Customer: “I have a picture.”

Picture… singular.

Me: *Ignoring the picture.* “Do you have the sizes of the kitchen? The windows, the stove, the refrigerator?”

Customer: *Slides picture over.* “It’s all there.”

Me: “This is just a single photo. You can’t even see all of the kitchen in this picture.”

Customer: “Can’t you just…” *Waves hand.* “…get the computer to figure out the rest. You have AI now, don’t you?”

Me: “That isn’t a service we offer. We could send someone over to take all the measurements we need if you like, ma’am.”

Customer: “No, I’d rather you use the computer and get a quote for me now.”

Me: “Without anything to go on, I can’t give you a quote.”

Customer: *Slides picture even closer.* “Come on! It’s like you’re not even trying!”

I’m on a call with a client to explain some issues with a project that was sent to him earlier. In the middle of the call, my office building shook with a pretty strong earthquake. Alarms sounded off, and evacuation began immediately.

Me: “Sir, I am going to have to call you back. We’ve just experienced an earthquake, and we need to evacuate the building. I am sure you can hear the alarms in the background.”

Caller: *Sighs.* “Do you have to go right this minute?”

Me: “…yes, sir, it’s an evacuation.”

Caller: “What floor are you on?”

Me: “A pretty high one.”

Caller: “Well, keep explaining the project to me for a few more minutes. It’ll give time for the stairwell to thin out a bit, and you can get down it faster.”

Me: “…no, sir. That isn’t how evacuations work. I’m going to put the phone down now.”

Caller: “Can you call me on your cell while you take the stairs?”

Me: “No!” *Click.*

The client left a voicemail with my boss, explaining how I was rude and aggressive. My boss called him back and said that if he ever tried to keep any of his guys inside a building during an emergency again, he’d drop him as a client.

CORRECTION: Some repeated words have been removed.

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.