I’m a self-employed home organizer and get my clients through word of mouth.

I work very hard one day so I can take a week off. I decide to organize this guy’s whole house beyond the day-to-day. I reorganize his closet, and after throwing away trash and doing dishes, I am able to put everything away in the closet neatly. Then, I leave town.

I receive a frantic call while on the road, so I get off the freeway and call my client.

Me: “Hi! What’s up? Do you need me to tell you where I’ve moved something?”

Client: “I… Yes… Where is my stuff? It’s all gone! What happened?!”

He sounds worried. He trusts me and doesn’t want to accuse me, but his stuff has all disappeared.

Me: “Did I forget to tell you I organized the closet? Have you looked in there?”

Client: “I don’t really use the closet, so no. But… where is everything, though?”

Me: “Go look in the closet; I’ll wait on the phone.”

A moment later:

Client: “YOU’RE A WIZARD!”

That had me smiling for a few reasons, including the male-gendered word since I’m a trans man. [Client] rarely sees me in person, so I was happy he remembered.

Over my break, he sent me a few texts saying I was magic.

I had to stop doing this work in part due to a physical disability, and in part due to other time commitments, but I loved how happy it made people.

I’m a professional photographer. A friend asks me to do a family shoot on Mother’s Day. I know I’ll have the morning to play with before going to see my own mum, so I accept. It is going to be at a winery in the country, and my friend offers to pay for me to join them for brunch. Bonus!

We carpool there, and it isn’t until we get there that I realise that it isn’t just going to be my friend, her husband, and her kids. It is my friend’s husband’s entire family: brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, parents, and even both grandmas.

Twenty-seven people.

I immediately panic about how long it’s going to take to do this shoot, and I mention to my friend and her husband that I have to leave in three hours to get back for my family Mother’s Day. My friend’s husband says it’ll be fine. I don’t really have a choice, as we carpooled, so I try to relax and have fun.

Brunch goes on forever, and when we’re finished, we only have an hour for photos. I figure that should be fine, if cutting it close, and I ask for my friend’s husband’s help in keeping his family organised and moving.

I plan out the normal shots with the husband — everyone together, family groups, and kids — and then the husband starts asking for couples shots, as well. Then siblings. I text my family and let them know I’ll be a little late, but I’m hoping it won’t be too bad because, hopefully, the husband will keep people moving.

An hour and a half later, everyone is having a bad time; the kids are crying, and it’s taking forever to get any shots at all. Why? Because my friend’s husband, as it turns out, is not a nice person. He is yelling at people, hurling commands and orders, barking, and foaming at the mouth.

It’s incredibly awful, and the winery people come over a few times and ask us to keep it down but the husband just yells at them, too, using some slurs I didn’t think he could get away with. I’m praying that they kick us out. I try telling him that I have to leave and that we can try again for photos another time. The family tries to leave, but he stops them. No. We must endure.

When he tells his son that he’s going to knock the snot out of him if he doesn’t stop crying, something snaps in me.

I stop trying to cheer people up and get fun photos and happy smiles. I just take the photos we need to so we can all just get the f*** out.

When I eventually get home, I do what I can with these miserable photos. I combine different frames to get group shots where everyone looks happy. Where that doesn’t work, I touch up facial expressions so people look less harried. I steal bits from candid shots earlier in the day.

These are impossible masterpieces when I’m through with them. I spend hours and hours making sure these pictures are going to hang in living rooms forever. I wouldn’t normally go this far, but I really do like my friend, and after finding out what her husband is like, I feel a little sorry for her.

Then, I go through every single f****** photo featuring my friend’s husband — absolutely every one — and just enough to be slightly noticeable, just enough to look weird and awkward, I enlarge his head.

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Back when I was working as an organizer and got work through word of mouth, a community member hired me at minimum wage to help him clear out his basement as he was moving.

He was getting a divorce, and he and his ex-wife were dividing up their belongings. My role turned out to be more of a mediator than an organizer. I had agreed to minimum wage as he was a community member and claimed times were hard. The huge fancy house belied that somewhat, but he was also adamant that we finish quickly so he could be done before his vacation to Fiji.

I helped them over eight hours a day for a couple of days, and my mental health was rapidly declining. One of my other self-employed jobs was actually as a mediator, for the very low price of $60 an hour. However, I would only meet with people for a couple of hours at a time, not like this.

I sent an email.

Me: “Hi. I can’t come in tomorrow unless you pay me $20 an hour. I didn’t expect to be breaking up your arguments all day.”

Client: “How could you do this to me? You know I have a vacation coming up! I can’t do this without you!”

Me: “Then pay me. I’m miserable, and $9 an hour isn’t worth this.”

Client: “You are a terrible person! You can’t do this! This is price gouging! I will never forgive you!”

He said a bunch of awful things attacking my character that I won’t repeat.

Me: “I’ll take pity on you even though you are being mean. If you agree to pay me $25 an hour, I will pretend you didn’t say all that, and I will give you two days of work. If you speak like this to me — or to your ex-wife in front of me — my offer to help you will be rescinded. My helping you is a favor.”

Unsurprisingly, he was very angry and said a lot more mean things. He sent a few nasty emails over the next few days. However, this was just funny to me because I felt so free. I am still happy with my decision fifteen years later.

He wasn’t entitled to me. I was more than generous.

I was designing a website for a client. The following occurred past the revision stage and just prior to the site going live. 

Client: “I found a lot of bugs on my site! I created a spreadsheet with the bugs I’ve found so far.”

The client sent over an Excel sheet. 

Me: “Um… these aren’t bugs. These are changes that you want to make to the design — changes that you didn’t make, mention, or specify during the design and development stage.”

Client: “I don’t care! These are bugs! If it’s something that I don’t want, it’s a problem! And ‘bug’ is just another word for ‘problem’! FIX IT!”

I am rendering still images for a publicity company and am working with a representative from the company to help (ha!) facilitate communication. I send her an email.

Me: “I have rendered all the images you requested and saved them into one .psd, and I also included a folder with the raw .tiffs should you want to make any changes yourself.”

A few minutes later…

Client: “Hey, yeah, um, all of these files are .tiffs, and I requested Photoshop documents… Could you do that for me?”

Me: “They already are in a PSD, named ‘All_images.psd’.”

Client: “Yes, but I checked the folder called ‘raw’ and they’re all .tiffs. I can’t use these because I don’t know what they are. Just please provide me with Photoshop documents.”

Me: “Have you checked the ‘All_images.psd’?”

Client: “Yes, but I just need Photoshop documents for all those .tiffs instead.”

I save each PSD individually to correspond with each .tiff and email her again, letting her know that they are there.

Client: “Oh, ‘PSD’ stands for ‘Photoshop document’! Wow, I never knew that! Ha, you learn something new every day, eh? Now, if you could just compile all of these images into one Photoshop document, we should be good to go!”