My client purchased a domain and asked that I set up emails for her and her staff.

Client: “You created the wrong email addresses.”

Me: “Oh? I am looking at the email you sent. I created the emails with the exact handles you requested.”

Client: “I need the emails to be [Client] at [Shortened Domain] dot com, not [Client] at [Really Long Domain Name That She Owns] dot com.”

Me: “I’m sorry, but that’s not the domain that you purchased.”

Client: “This has nothing to do with my domain. My domain is correct. The emails are wrong.”

Me: “You cannot make any email address you want. It doesn’t work like that. You need to own the domain you are using for the email addresses.”

Client: *Now enraged* “WHY WOULD YOU EVEN AGREE TO CREATE EMAILS WITH SUCH A LONG DOMAIN? This is unacceptable!”

Me: “…”

I worked for free for months helping a non-profit.

Client: “Can you take on this additional project?”

Me: “I could, but to do anything more, I would need to be paid.”

Not only did they say no, but they told other non-profits in the area that I was “blackmailing” them.

I got hired by a European governmental agency to do graphics on a video for them. They insisted I invoiced them before the job even started, so I did, and they paid in full in a matter of days.

And that’s the last I ever heard of them. I literally got paid to do nothing.

My guess is they had to spend money before the end of their budget year to justify their next year’s budget, but whatever, I got paid!

I’m an amateur web designer working to build up my portfolio. A local business owner in the heating and air conditioning industry decided he’d have me build him a basic website, but he would not provide any information at all other than that he wanted to use the colors orange and brown. I tried to coach him through the basics.

Me: “First things first. Do you have a logo created already that I can use for your site, or do you want some help with that, as well?”

Client: “No, I have one.”

What he emailed me was a pixelated, jagged-edged, tiny image that looked like it had been pasted together in MS Paint. It had the well-known silhouette of Michael Jordan doing a slam dunk and clip art — with a watermark — of an AC condenser pasted on the hand where a basketball should be. The customer’s company name? Air Jordan.

Me: “Uh, just so you know, it’s illegal to use someone else’s logo like that — even if you did slap some clip art over the top of it.”

Client: “What are you talking about? I had this made specifically for my business!”

Me: “Those two images aren’t yours to use. You do know you could be sued for copyright infringement, right? Fines can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars, plus legal fees.”

After some grumbling and back-and-forth arguing in this same vein for a couple of days via email, voicemail, and text messaging where the customer insisted I use his “custom logo” and pictures he’d scanned out of magazines, I still refused to use his shady materials.

Client: “You’re really serious about this copyright stuff, aren’t you?”

Me: “Yes.”

Client: “Why can’t you just relax?”

Client fired.

Client: “We need more diversity in this image.”

Me: “What did you have in mind.”

Client: “We need to make one of these people Black.”

Me: “Well, we can look for other photos—”

Client: “No, we like this photo. Can you just paint one of these people black?”

Me: “Uh… no.”

Client: “But you change colors of things all the time!”

Me: “This is different.”

Client: “Why?”

Me: “Because you’re literally asking me to do blackface!”