I used to do freelance web design. I met with a new client one day, and we talked about her website. The site in question was supposed to be for an online catering service.

Me: “Okay. I will need the product descriptions for each one of your dishes.”

She takes out a large notebook.

Client: “I have the text right here.”

Me: “But this is all handwritten. I will need this in DOC format.”

Client: “Can’t you just scan it?”

Me: “No, it has to be typed on a computer so I can paste the text into the site.”

Client: “Well, here you go. You type it.”

She tries to hand me the notebook.

Me: “There are more than fifty pages in there. My job is to make websites, not to transcribe notebooks. You’ll have to transcribe it yourself and hand me a DOC file with—”

Client: “But this will take me at least three days! Can’t you just do it?”

Me: “Well, I’m not going to transcribe a notebook of handwritten text for you. I’m assuming you won’t even pay for a job like this, as it will cost you more than your budget affords.”

Client: “Can’t you just do it for free?”

Me: “No.”

Client: “But it will take me a lot of time to type all this on a computer. I’m not a fast typer.”

Me: “I’m sure you understand that I am also not thrilled about the idea of wasting my holidays transcribing all that text.”

A week later, she called me and accused me of ruining her holidays with boring transcribing.

After almost a month of web development, I present a dev site to a particularly picky client whose existing website was over ten years old and looked it.

After a few days, he calls me.

Client: “Well, I’ve looked over the site, and I like it. The only problem is that I sent the site to my mother, and she thinks it’s too wordy. Can you do something about that?”

Me: “I can definitely help with trimming down some of the text for you without losing important parts.”

Client: “Trimming down? No, I need all that text on the site. Just make it less wordy.”

Me: “I’m not sure I understand. You want me to reduce the amount of words without deleting any copy?”

Client: “Yes.”

Related:
“Why Waste Time Say Lot Word When Few Word Do Trick?”

Client: “Our website is down. We need it up now. All our business is done via our website.”

Me: “You cancelled our services in May of 2014.”

It’s spring of 2015 now.

Client: “Yeah, but it was working last week, and we need it up now. We’re losing money even as we speak.”

Me: “You haven’t paid us since April of 2014, and you said your new IT company had it last year. We took it down in a bit of a virtual clean-up last week.”

Client: “Yeah, but it was working last week, and we need it back up. Now.”

Me: “I have an email from you telling me to cancel your service in May of 2014. We haven’t charged you since then… but your website was still up.”

Client: “Yeah… so you should have warned us before taking it down.”

Me: “You told us to take it down. Last year. Then you stopped paying us.”

Client: “We need it now. We’re losing thousands of dollars every day.”

Me: “Okay… We need to get it off a backup drive, and then you need to pay for the hosting of that website from May of last year to now.”

Client: “Wait, wait, wait… You want money from us? No way. No, no, no. We’ll find a new web designer, make a better site, and find someone to host it. And we’re gonna sue you for not warning us that you were taking our site down.”

Me: “You told us to take it down last year. You stopped paying us. You should ask your new IT company why they didn’t migrate it. You want to build a new site? Cool. That will take a few weeks. You said you were losing thousands daily. It’ll cost less than that to have your site up in a few hours.”

Client: “F*** YOU!”

Me: “Okay… Thanks for calling. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

I have worked as a full-time freelancer for the past eight years. I occasionally receive job proposals from random clients from a forum I’m a member of. 

Client: “Are you looking for work? I have a part-time job that takes ten to fifteen hours per week, managing a website. A lot of it is working on auto-pilot, but some things require a human. What are your hourly rates?”

Me: “Yeah, I could take that on. What’s your budget?”

I didn’t know if my minimum of $25 an hour would scare him or be too low.

Client: “Yeah, it’s pretty simple and fun. About the hourly: we had this dude, paid him $15 an hour, good worker. We now have this other dude, doesn’t do much, misses deadlines, doesn’t communicate, and we pay him $5 an hour. So, if you could do what the first dude did and we pay you like the second one, that’d be great.”

I design websites. One of my clients called me on a Saturday evening.

Client: “I’m in LA, and my computer doesn’t work.”

Me: “I’m not a computer technician; I design websites.”

Client: “But you work with computers. Isn’t that the same thing?”

Me: “What is going on?”

Client: “It just doesn’t work.”

Me: “But I don’t understand. What happens?”

Client: “You’re the computer guy; you’d know better than me.”

Me: “…I can get you in contact with a computer technician I know who might be able to help you.”

Client: “But he will charge me.”

I got him in contact with a computer technician, he did an immediate remote session, and they seemed to solve the problem. He charged my customer $80 for the quick solution.

In my next payment, I found a deduction of $80.