My client owns a small family business. He looks very unconfident.

Me: “You may purchase my web hosting service in addition to my web design service.”

Client: “Actually…” *Looking at his wife.*

Client’s Wife: “Just speak your mind, honey.”

Client: “Actually, we would like to self-host. We can put it in our own server.”

Me: “Are you sure? Managing your own server requires quite a lot of professional knowledge.”

Client: *Hesitant.* “Yeah, I think I may know a little bit about computers… I guess?”

Client’s Wife: “Honey, stop saying you know only a little. You build your own servers, you design all the networking stuff, you operate all of our software. You are an expert, you know that?”

Client: “Oh, sorry, I may know too much…”

Client’s Wife: *To me.* “I blame his parents.”

I am a web designer and developer working with a client who has pretty much zero concept of my time — or anyone’s time other than her own. She also has zero understanding of technology and how to use it.

I’ve been working on this project for four and a half months, and I have nothing completed to show. I’ve sent her proofs of pages and asked for content… and gotten nothing.

I’ve gone a whole month without getting a single response from her.

The company I work for is a smaller company, and we’ve recently overhauled how we do our quoting system with clients. She is on the old quote system (no penalty for not providing content), and therefore, we cannot penalize her. It’s a nightmare.

Here is our most recent conversation.

Me: “Can you provide links and/or reference images for the icons you would like designed, as well as some logo ideas?”

Client: “Sure! I’ll have them to you by the end of the day.”

She then proceeded to send me four pictures of some icons/images that she had Googled on her MacBook. She had then taken a picture of the Google results on her iPhone and THEN sent me the pictures from her iPhone email.

Me: “Those aren’t really going to work. I need the original files to do anything with them. Could you send me the original links?”

Client: “I sent the links; they’re on the second line. Did you not get them?”

Me: “Yes, I received them. However, these are low-res iPhone images that will not suffice for reference images. I will need the direct links for the artwork you would like to use.”

She then sent me the exact same four iPhone photos and told me to “check the second line” (in other words, the attachments).

I’m looking forward to this project being done. I’m not holding my breath, though. Hopefully, within the next ten years.

I am going through the latest design for a webpage with a client.

Client: “It’s mostly good, but the navigation is too busy. Could we replace it with one button that takes the user to the page they want?”

Me: “I’m not sure what you mean. Can you please elaborate?”

Client: “Just one next button. Nothing else.”

Me: “So you want the site to be linear? One page following another in a set order?”

Client: “No, I want the site to know where the user wants to go next.”

Me: “With just the one button?”

Client: “Yes.”

Me: “We can’t do that.”

Client: “Why not?”

Me: “First of all, the technology does not exist to allow your site to read minds and know where to navigate based off of that. And secondly, even if the tech did exist, it would be impossible to implement based on the budget for your site, which is £300.”

Client: “Hmm… what if we increased the budget to £400?”

A client calls us out of the blue:

Client: “My email doesn’t work!”

Me: “I’m sorry to hear that, but we only made a website for you; I don’t understand how that’s relat—”

Client: “—My site doesn’t work either!”

I open the site in my browser.

Me: “Sir, the site is working just fine… I’m looking at it right now.”

Client: “It doesn’t work here!”

Me: “You must be having some issues with your internet connection, have you tried calling the company that provides internet to you?”

Client: “I don’t know who they are!”

Me: “Don’t you receive a monthly invoice from them?”

Client: “I only look at those when I have the time! Look, can you pass me to your boss?”

The client ends up having a lengthy talk with my boss. My boss turns to me and says:

Boss: “Grab the company car and go to his office, the address is [over an hour’s drive]. Figure out what’s wrong with his internet.”

Me: “Uh… why? That’s not what we do.”

Boss: “Look, it’s obvious it’s just because he’s not paying his internet bill. This moron is paying an hourly rate for you to go and confirm that, though. If he wants to pay the idiot tax today, I am happy to collect!”

I made the drive. I got lunch on the client’s dime. I confirmed the client was three months behind on his internet bill. After I explained that we just provided a webpage and that we “did not own the internet” he finally agreed to pay the bill… after he paid us of course.

Related:
Internot Getting It, Part 4
Internot Getting It, Part 3
Internot Getting It, Part 2
Internot Getting It

I was handling a project that required me to create the company’s new website. When I presented it to my client, he liked the site but wanted a different set of photos to be displayed on the site. 

Me: “We don’t have stock photos of that.”

Client: “That’s not my problem. Figure it out!”

The next day, I presented rates from stock photo websites where we could purchase the photos for our website.

Client: “I’m not going to pay for photos! Just grab something generic off the Internet that someone can’t claim is theirs!”

And then I quit.