This conversation happened over a period of about a month, as it took them so long to reply each time. 

Client: “I need you to draw a picture for me.”

Me: “Okay. What will this be a picture of?”

One and a half weeks later…

Client: “Do you know the Chinese Cherry Blossom flower?”

Me: “Yes! What about it?”

Another week later…

Client: “I want you to draw it for me.”

Me: “Can you be more specific? As a logo? A header? A specific design?”

Another week later…

Client: “I want you to draw a Chinese Cherry Blossom flower for me.”

Like a lot of people, I’ve decided to cut the cord and get rid of my cable, and since the promo period on my Internet is expiring, I’ve decided to downgrade it a bit to save money. I call the order in on the fifth of the month; my bill comes out on the tenth, so that’s plenty of time. On the eleventh, I get my bill, and not only is the TV still on there (my fault) but the old, higher-priced Internet without the promo is there, too. So I call.

Nice phone support goes over with me that the TV is not removed until I return the equipment, and they ask if I can take it back to the local store. Sure! When I do, I’ll get the credit pro-rated from the return on my next bill, and they can fix the overcharge for the Internet at the same time.

What completely puzzles me is that, an hour later, I get a notification that my bill is paid. The payment was by a credit card ending in four digits that match none of mine, and I’m set up on autopay that comes out the twenty-fifth of every month. The bill is just over $120, so it isn’t just a credit for anything. Plus, there’s $10 left on the bill; the amount paid is my old amount. My new amount is $10 higher (because the ‘net wasn’t downgraded).

I go over there on my lunch hour, figuring I’ll straighten everything out at once. I walk in, and at first, I see no one. Then, from the back corner, behind plexiglass (understandable), I hear, “What do ya need?”

I walk over and find a girl with headphones on. She has a laptop with a movie streaming in addition to the two “work” monitors I can see. She pulls one side of the headphones off.

Me: “I need to return my TV equipment. I canceled it.”

Representative: “Phone number on the account.”

I give it, she asks if she has the correct name, and I confirm.

Me: “While I’m here, I have a couple of other billing issues, and they told me last night on the phone that you could fix them.”

Representative: “What—” *eyeroll* “—billing issues?”

Me: “Well, I changed my Internet package on the fifth, and I got my bill on the tenth, and it’s still charging me for the higher.”

Representative: *Another eyeroll* “If you change your package in the middle of the billing cycle, it doesn’t show up until the next bill!”

I’m not having a good day.

Me: “Let’s do some basic math, shall we? I changed it on the fifth. I got my bill six days later since I didn’t actually get it until the eleventh since my billing cycle starts on the tenth, which was a Sunday. So it was not in the middle of the billing cycle; my bill after that was wrong.”

Representative: “I don’t need you to talk to me like that!”

Me: “Well, listen to your customer, and you won’t be talked to like that.”

Representative: *Yet another eyeroll* “I can credit you the $10, and your bill will be paid, okay?”

Me: “Fine, I’ll take the credit, but about that payment last night, that wasn’t me. That wasn’t my credit card. I didn’t pay it.”

Representative: *Tapping keys* “There, I gave you the credit. Your bill is paid, okay?!”

Me: “Again, I didn’t make that payment. I think someone else’s payment was applied to my account.”

Representative: *And another eyeroll* “I don’t know what to tell you. I gave you the credit; your bill is paid!”

Me: “I didn’t pay my bill; someone else did, and—”

Representative: *Cuts me off* “You’ll get your credit for returning the equipment and the TV charges on your next bill. Is there anything else?”

Me: “Nope…”

Man, whoever paid my bill, thank you, and I’m sorry, I tried to be honest… because a week later, my bill is still paid. Blame the person whose movie I interrupted!

My former company messed up royally, and the resulting exodus was glorious.

My own manager was, to put it bluntly, a monster in a human suit, and even that description probably insults monsters.

The final trigger for just about everyone was the end-of-year reviews. Water-cooler whispers around the lower-rung staff said that everyone who wasn’t management got reviews that were less than stellar, regardless of how hard the employees worked. Many were denied raises entirely and were given a story about how the company simply couldn’t afford to give out raises this year. Some were given chump change and were told that this was the best management could do. By chump change, I mean that some people got $0.05 more per hour, and those were the naïve or desperate who busted their a**es in the hopes of earning recognition. This set the staff on a low simmer.

The true slip-up happened when Human Resources sent a number of emails to the wrong people: the supervisors. In our company, supervisors were doing management work without management benefits and with a laughable increase in pay. The emails blatantly instructed anyone of (actual) management rank and above to spin the exact story we were fed. The email acknowledged that the company was facing record profits, and to prove it, management and those higher were being given incredibly generous (hush money) raises.

This switched the simmer to a roiling boil instantly. The supervisors were hardly even a step above the rest of us, and they had already been having a negative reaction to the nonsense-level workloads that had been dropped on them. Within twenty-four hours, everyone below management was in stealth-mutiny mode.

By the next week, everyone who was not in upper management was starting to take turns “having the flu” as we did interviews at other companies.

Within a month, the company began hemorrhaging employees. Surprised expressions quickly turned into full-on panic.

I had been a bit slower at getting my new job, so by the time I was giving my resignation, management was practically throwing suitcases of money at staff in order to retain them. No one was taking the bait.

Boss: “You know, [My Name], your commitment and loyalty to [Company] haven’t gone unnoticed by upper management, so I’m proud to tell you that all of your work finally has paid off.”

They pushed a list of benefits, and increased pay, at me. These were all things that I had been trying to get for years.

I pushed the list back.

Me: “I don’t think you understand; it’s too late. I’m leaving the company. This is my last day employed by [Company].”

Boss: “What can we offer you to get you to stay?”

I gave them an icy stare.

Me: “Literally nothing. I’m leaving. Let’s be clear. You tried to deny me paid time off for my honeymoon. You told me to put my dying dog in a freezer and to either grieve later or to get over it. You and I both know that anything you offer me now would just turn into a lie within months.”

I stood up from the table.

Me: “You lied to us a few months ago about how all of this—” *tapping the paper on the table in front of me* “—wasn’t possible to offer us, and the fact that you are offering it now proves that you were all deliberately been screwing us over. You are soulless, stupid, and incompetent, and I don’t even need a job reference from this s***show of a company.”

I spun on my heel and walked out, closing the door on their sputtering attempts to reply.

I won’t deny that that felt really, really good, considering how long I had been biting my tongue. The job prospects had been horrible until this point, so my only regret was that I couldn’t get a job opportunity lined up earlier.

My client is a residential and commercial painter with years of experience but no marketing history. In order to create a website for him, I give him a “homework” list of details to compile so that I can compose his bio, also include pictures of his previous works, areas of service and expertise, etc.

Two weeks go by and I email asking about his progress. Another week passes and he finally replies simply stating:

Client: “Here’s a link to my competitor. Just use what he has.”

Our old house was ridiculously hard to find. The entrance was easy to drive past, it had a series of apartments next to it, and four houses all split off from the path that came to our house.

Whenever I ordered pizza, I checked how well the driver had been able to find the house, and I kept adding instructions until I had about three paragraphs accurately guiding people down the right paths, giving them a clear location to park, and listing three different ways to identify if you were going down the wrong stairs, including the fact that the closest stairs you could mistakenly go down were attached to a car-port.

Once I got it to this length, most drivers commented happily how useful it was since it saved them a lot of messing around, or they at least found us very rapidly without knocking on the other house we were attached to.

This only failed me twice. The first time, I was absolutely certain that the driver wasn’t quite at reading level in English, which was fair, and he was sweet and only a little lost. The second one, though…

He went down the wrong stairs, complained when I corrected him, basically had very little interest in coming down to the correct area, and made me come up to meet him. The kicker, though, was his parting line.

Delivery Driver: “Why do you have so many directions on your place? It’s so easy to find.”

I didn’t see that guy again. I didn’t make a complaint because he made it to me in the end. However, the next driver was once again grateful for the instructions. It’s only you, mystery driver.