I get a call from a client.

Client: “Hello, I have an idea for a website. It will be a site about corrupted lawyers and politicians. America is ready to know the truth! We will put a lot of links on it and millions will come to the site. After that, we are going to sell it for $10,000,000!  And my webmaster will get 20%!”

Me: “It will take time and a lot of work for your website to attract that many people.”

Client: “YOU DON’T WANT TO MAKE TWO MILLION DOLLARS?! THEN I DON’T WANT TO BE F****** TALKING TO YOU!”

And they hung up.

Me: “As soon as you get us the pricing database, we need five weeks to build the online quoting application. If we get it this week, we can do a September first launch.”

Four weeks later…

Client: “Here is the pricing database. Sorry for the delay. So, we are still good for the September first launch, right?”

I once had a web client who was stalling. We presumed it was because he’d run out of cash, which he had. He asked me first to make sure the site looked the same in every browser. Fair enough, but then, he asked me to make sure it looked the same on every MONITOR he would see it on. After I explained screen calibration, the difference between Mac monitors and PC monitors, etc., he asked:

Client: “I need you to produce mockups in every shade of blue available. If you can’t do that, it’s a dealbreaker.”

The deal was broken. We also had to take him to court to get paid.

I sent out a link to the beta of a site I was building for a client. Since it was powered by a CMS (content management system), the pages still used dummy content. I got a kick out of the email I got back.

Client: “We love the site, but one thing: maybe our computer is broken, but everything seems to be getting translated into Latin. It just says, ‘Lorem ipsum something something’. Maybe something is broken with the site, or else do we need to change a setting?”

Client: “It looks good, but I just want the text to pop more. I want more contrast.”

The text is white on black.

Client: “Can we change it to, like, a gray?”

Me: “Gray on black?”

Client: “Yeah, I think that would make it really stand out.”

Fast forward five color changes.

Client: “I think white would look best here.”