Polite Customer: “So, you provide [product], don’t you?”

Polite Me: “Yes, I do. It costs [value].”

Outraged Customer: “[Person who did the referral] told me you charged [less than a third of the real price].”

I spend a minute searching for my conversation with that person and taking a screenshot.

Polite Me: “Actually, here you can see I charged [what I’d said earlier] and they accepted.”

Seemingly Surprised Customer: “Oh! I must have misheard. How about [asks for a lesser, yet still ludicrous, discount]?”

Sarcastic Me: “Sure, but you’ll get [a lesser amount of the product].”

Re-Outraged Customer: “That’s why you don’t get customers!”

Thrilled Me: “I get enough to weed out those who aren’t worth my time. I can afford it. Goodbye.”

Blocked.

I work for a creative agency, and we’d just taken on a big national brand, so there was a lot of pressure to get it right from the get-go. They were launching a new campaign and had supplied a brand kit and a list of approved messaging.

Our main contact, their head of brand, was never happy, never seemed up to date with what was going on, and always found something to nitpick. Things like wanting stock imagery, shooting down the suggestions we made by complaining the stock imagery “looks like stock imagery” (funny that) before presenting the same images as her own suggestions three rounds later, and regularly changing her mind about which of the approved message lines she wanted to use.

Eventually, after nearly two weeks of back and forth (and a week later than planned), we received sign off and managed to get the social campaign live late on a Thursday.

Three days later, on Sunday, I got a panicked call on my personal mobile from my boss.

Boss: “[Client] has kicked off about the creative that’s gone live!”

Cue me getting dragged into an out-of-hours weekend call with the client.

Client: “This is all wrong! We can’t be using this messaging! None of this is approved; this is a mess!”

Me: “I’m sorry… this was all listed in the approved messaging framework you gave us, though. And do you mind my asking what has changed? This was signed off on Thursday?”

Client: “I needed it to be more visual! When I signed it off, I didn’t read it!”

Me: “…I don’t know how to respond to that.”

She was swiftly pulled from the project when we raised a complaint about her on Monday.

Back about thirty-five years ago, when $250,000 was a lot of money for the construction of a new house in our area, I almost landed a gem of a Client From Hell who balked at paying a meager $300 for schematic plans and elevations based on a cardboard model they built themselves “to move the process along and save some money on a designer’s fee”. Their objection?

Client: “Well, if the bids come in too high, we’ll be out $300, and you’ll need to redraw everything for free.”

Um, no.

I work for a graphic design firm. I can hear a coworker on the phone with a client as I approach my desk. The client is on speakerphone as I approach, and I hear:

Client: *Excitedly.* “And the pickle should be smiling, but not like… too happy. People don’t trust pickles that are too happy.”

There’s a pause. I look up at my colleague across the room, who takes the call off speakerphone, but I can still hear her side of the conversation.

Coworker: “Got it. So just to clarify, you want something bold, subtle, quirky, corporate, cute but intimidating, loud but muted, and minimal but detailed.”

Pause.

Coworker: “Perfect. I’ll just feed that into the AI and let it have a panic attack.”

I did not envy her the afternoon she was about to have.

I’m doing some price negotiations at a consulting firm with a client. I am dealing with a particularly annoying potential client. I have gone around in circles with him over email, tweaking this and that, and seeing how it would update the price. None of the changes have a significant impact on the price; he’s just trying to nickel and dime everything and arguing over a $20 difference on a seven-figure contract.

Finally, after two dozen emails, we finally end up on a twenty-six-week fixed fee project for a set price. I send him the final statement of work to sign, and he responds.

Client: “Hey, SOW looks good. But we have our [big annual meeting] coming up, and we want to keep you guys on through that. Can you update the end date to be the end of the year?”

Me: “Okay, that will take us up to thirty-two weeks. Let me run the numbers, and I will get another version to you tomorrow morning with updated pricing.”

Client: “Why would the pricing update?”

Related:
Time Is Money, Part 2
Time Is Money