A client asked me to design a logo for his flower shop. He didn’t give any specifications — just that he needed a logo.

I created the logo in Illustrator, designing an image and selecting a typeface that matched it elegantly.

Client: “What is this, a computer logo? You just used a program to spit this out? I was paying you to hand design this, not just pick a font. I thought you said you were an experienced designer!”

Ah, my mistake.

I’m leaving graphic design and going to open a candy store. I’d say wish me luck, but knowing I’m never going to deal with this kind of client again kind of means I don’t need luck.

I work in accounts management for a large university. It is university policy that all employees of any type must have an employee email at the employee domain and all students must have a student email at the student domain. This sometimes leads to issues where a student employee or employee who is also a student does not realize they have two accounts.

In this case, a supervisor of student employees is emailing me.

Client: “I’m not sure who to address this issue to, but I received a call from one of the Chairpeople indicating that they have a situation with student employees having multiple email accounts.”

Me: “It is university policy that all employees have an employee email address. We can work with the students to set up automatic forwarding from their employee account to their student account so they do not have to monitor both.”

Client: “I’ve looked at this student’s account, and they have two email accounts. They are listed in the system as a ‘student employee’.”

Me: “Yes, as I said, it is university policy. If they do not want to set up forwarding, we can assist them in setting up proxy access for easier usage.”

Client: “But is it necessary for the student to have two email accounts? Could this be changed so that the student can only have one email account at [student domain]?”

Me: *Pauses* “Yes, it is necessary. Policy.”

My client is late on a payment. I send several PayPal invoices in hopes to collect payment, but they swear they’ve mailed payment.

Me: “What address did you send the payment to?”

Client: “I sent it to [address], as per your invoice.”

Me: “That’s Paypal’s corporate office.”

A client contacts me for a commercial for her new business. We meet. I spend some time putting together a proposal to meet her low budget and high expectations. She doesn’t reply.

Four months later, she calls me up and asks me for another meeting and another proposal as she has rebranded her business. We meet. She has higher expectations due to her new branding, courtesy of her recently hired “Head of Marketing”, who claims to have worked for decades with companies like Sony.

Together, they request a new proposal that still stays with her original low budget.

I write up a new proposal and wait. She disappears.

A month later, after three attempts to reconnect via email, she finally replies.

Client: “Sorry for not getting back to you as I was out of the country. I found someone else to produce the commercial, as it was time sensitive and needed to be completed earlier.”

I gave instructions in a PDF to a client about how to make updates. I included screenshots of the pages with explicit instructions on how to log in and make changes and what buttons to push. They emailed me with a problem.

Client: “Nothing works! It’s all broken! What’s going on?”

The problem? They were clicking the update “button” in the screenshot — the one with the big red arrow I had drawn next to it.