Client: “We’re confused by the upside-down exclamation mark on the info box. Can you turn it the right way up?”

Me: “That’s… Uh, that’s a letter i. As in ‘information’.”

The Super Bowl LVIII is being televised, and I am enjoying it on my Sunday with some friends, joking about Taylor Swift, and getting caught up in the tight win. Go Kansas City Chiefs!

During the game, I get a Slack message forwarded to my phone from one of my clients from my graphic design work. The client knows I work a standard Monday-to-Friday, nine-to-five, so I ignore it and enjoy the rest of my Sunday.

On Monday morning, I turn on my computer to find a barrage of emails from the client, getting angrier and angrier. I decide it might be best to resolve this more quickly and just call the client.

Me: “Hello, [Client], this is [My Name]. I wanted to—”

Client: “Finally, he responds! I have an emergency here, and you’ve been AWOL! This is not the level of service I expect and—”

Me: “[Client], it’s 8:09 am on a Monday morning. I have spent the last nine minutes going through your emails, and I’m calling you right back.”

Client: “I emailed you yesterday!”

Me: “Yesterday was Sunday. I do not work on Sundays. I was enjoying the Super Bowl.”

Client: “Excuses! I have an emergency! You need to fix it!”

Me: “You didn’t specify in the emails what the emergency was; you just kept saying it was urgent and then called me names for not responding. What’s the emergency?”

Client: “The logo on my website! It’s the wrong kind of green!”

Me: “It’s been that same tone of green for years, ever since we first designed it for you.”

Client: “Yes, but now I need it to be a different green! It’s giving off the wrong energy according to the color experts on TikTok.”

Me: “I… see? What kind of green did you want to change it to?”

The client emails me a photo of a celebrity wearing a green scarf. It takes me all of a few minutes to source the exact type of green and update the logo. I tell the client to refresh the site.

Me: “Is that better?”

Client: “Yes. I don’t know why you couldn’t have done this yesterday!”

Me: “It was the Super Bowl!”

Client: “And the Super Bowl is more important than my logo?”

Me: “You want me to answer that honestly?”

I ask a client for some financial documentation for a deadline, including several accounting reports on a cash-basis — as opposed to an accrual basis. The two are different ways of accounting, to put it in the most basic terms.

The client emails back.

Client: “I cannot send you a CASH-basis Profit and Loss Statement. We do not deal in cash. We take credit cards only.”

I walked away from my computer at that point, walked into my boss’s office, and told him I was mentally done for the day.

Client: “I’m not too sure about the blue…”

Me: “Actually, that’s green.”

Client: “Who’s the client?”

Me: “You.”

Client: “And what color is it?”

Me: “…blue?”

Client: “Right. Now, let me see what other shades of blue we have.”

We settled on pine tree “blue”.

I was awake for thirty-seven hours during the final phase of this design. I called my client and told him I needed to sleep before I could do any more work.

Client: “Just one other quick thing…”

Me: “Yes?”

Client: “Can you just quickly translate it into French while I go eat breakfast?”