Clients from HELL!!!
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- felizfeliz0
http://www.digitalsurvivors.com/…
"If Architects Had to Work Like Web Designers
Unknown
January 10, 2002
Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.Keep in mind that the house I ultimately choose must cost less than the one I am currently living in. Make sure, however, that you correct all the deficiencies that exist in my current house (the floor of my kitchen vibrates when I walk across it, and the walls don't have nearly enough insulation in them).
As you design, also keep in mind that I want to keep yearly maintenance costs as low as possible. This should mean the incorporation of extra-cost features like aluminum, vinyl, or composite siding. (If you choose not to specify aluminum, be prepared to explain your decision in detail.)
Please take care that modern design practices and the latest materials are used in construction of the house, as I want it to be a showplace for the most up-to-date ideas and methods. Be alerted, however, that kitchen should be designed to accommodate, among other things, my 1952 Gibson refrigerator.
To insure that you are building the correct house for our entire family, make certain that you contact each of our children, and also our in-laws. My mother-in-law will have very strong feelings about how the house should be designed, since she visits us at least once a year.
Make sure that you weigh all of these options carefully and come to the right decision. I, however, retain the right to overrule any choices that you make.
Please don't bother me with small details right now. Your job is to develop the overall plans for the house: Get the big picture. At this time, for example, it is not appropriate to be choosing the color of the carpet. However, keep in mind that my wife likes blue.
Also, do not worry at this time about acquiring the resources to build the house itself. Your first priority is to develop detailed plans and specifications. Once I approve these plans, however, I would expect the house to be under roof within 48 hours.
While you are designing this house specifically for me, keep in mind that sooner or later I will have to sell it to someone else. It therefore should have appeal to a wide variety of potential buyers.
Please make sure before you finalize the plans that there is a consensus of the population in my area that they like the features this house has. I advise you to run up and look at my neighbor's house that he constructed last year. We like it a great deal. It has many features that we would also like in our new home, particularly the 75-foot swimming pool. With careful engineering, I believe that you can design this into our new house without impacting the final cost.
Please prepare a complete set of blueprints. It is not necessary at this time to do the real design, since they will be used only for construction bids. Be advised, however, that you will be held accountable for any increase of construction costs as a result of later design changes.
You must be thrilled to be working on as an interesting project as this! To be able to use the latest techniques and materials and to be given such freedom in your designs is something that can't happen very often.
Contact me as soon as possible with your complete ideas and plans.
PS: My wife has just told me that she disagrees with many of the instructions I've given you in this letter. As architect, it is your responsibility to resolve these differences. I have tried in the past and have been unable to accomplish this. If you can't handle this responsibility, I will have to find another architect.
PPS: Perhaps what I need is not a house at all, but a travel trailer. Please advise me as soon as possible if this is the case."
- FredMcWoozy0
When I get a business card this size (not 3.5 x 2 inches), I think that that person is a fag.
- FredMcWoozy0
“My wife really hates blue. So does my secretary.”
- FredMcWoozy0
Can you re-upload the photos on my site? I think they are fading from so many people clicking on them.
- akrokdesign0
haha.. :-)
- doctor0
We need to stop showing clients Lorem ipsum text. Far too many of them can't abstract properly from it.
- are you crazy? then they'll strt picking at what's in there!! "we don't deal with tigers, what IS this!!"Projectile
- "Why is this in french? Can we see the English version?"
re: lorem ipsummonNom - hahahaProjectile
- vaxorcist0
I once had a client's assistant call up and say something like "We need you to remove that FPO text on top of all the photos because it has to go to press in 15 minutes"
- mattiaBK0
Thanks for sharing! LOL
- harlequino0
Very funny, but c'mon, some of this has to be made up:
"Can you send that logo over in electron form, at the highest granularity you have"
- Didsomething0
- awesome. this weeks 7 legged spiderflashbender
- ahahah the designs look pretty good!Ravdyk
- Projectile0
gem!!
“I have a design already made, or at least I know exactly what I want so it should be easy for you if you’re a good designer. Also, I would built this site myself but I don’t have time. It is a very straight forward build that I could do myself so I expect to not have to pay for this.”
- invisiblechamber0
»The unicorns don’t look realistic enough.«
- shitehawke0
I was working on a project which mutated from a flash-based presentation to a huge rambling application with massive amounts of content, images, video, text and audio. It was a nightmare.
We presented it to the clients who had called all the managers in for a preview and feedback. After showing how it worked, they changed their mind again as to what they wanted but the best bit of feedback was from the CEO who said 'I saw a video from a competitor with music on it over the video, it was great. Can we do that with 'simply the best' or that abba song 'winner takes it all'?'
I believe I cried that night.
- chrisRG0
HAHAHA!
"Can you re-upload the photos on my site? I think they are fading from so many people clicking on them."
- felizfeliz0
"Whiteboard
After presenting a new design for a company website, the owner leaned over, asked if she could suggest some changes to the layout, got out a black marker and started drawing the changes on my MacBook’s screen. I was stunned."
staggering
- should have jsut scrolled and lolled...Stugoo
- I think I would have had an aneurysm.shitehawke
- HAHAHA!!Projectile
- I take it after the incident, you proceeded to take the black marker and stab her in the eye with it?zombee
- Wow.Complexfruit
- :Otheredmasque
- i believe she was found dead later on.. dumped in a deserted warehouse with a keyboard up her throat..janne76
- Was it a permanent marker?villars
- bolus0
"Instead of edits or comments, I’ve just drawn sad faces in places where I don’t like the copy."
haha
to be fair though, I've also met a few designers who were pretty shit.... Not too long ago I had to explain to someone that in the age of broadband internet no one was waiting for poor quality pictures on an architecture site. He refused to acknowledge that pixelated photography made the site look amateurish to say the least.... He also had a fucked up sense of colour.....
- chossy0
I agree horp, it's infuriating because you know that when you put the phone down they are immediatly thinking you are a fucking know it all wise ass and you wanted to make a fool of them.
being nice doesn't work because they take advantage of that and be aggressive to try to get what they want
being aggressive back doesn't work clearly
trying to explain it makes you look like you are mocking them
- it comes down to just letting your self get shit on and taking it like a champ with a smile on your face. so long as they pay, whatever.geoman2k
- chossy0
All of these made my pals sweat and made me nervous as hell, reason being is because they remind me of a small website I did for a client and there were fucking loads of emails between us where he kept going back and forth, and sending the site off to people he knew designers and ad execs before it went live to get feedback, I ended up doing so many changes it almost ruined me.
- babaganush0
This is awesome-
1. Prospective client: $400 for a logo?! Why are you so expensive? My nephew has Photoshop—I can just get him to do it.
2. Me: Does your nephew have Microsoft Word?
3. Prospective client: Yes.
4. Me: Then have him write you a novel while he’s at it.- BWAHAHAHAHAwhereRI
- boom boom powBattleAxe
- oh, i am going to use that one. that's gold.cramdesign
- Horp0
Hahaha, there's some great stuff there.
I once did the artwork for a single that was only being put out on CD. This was for a major label not a pokey little set up. The band decided they wanted photographs of their moms on the back cover. I asked them to send me photos that were approved for use. I got tiny little 20k jpegs cropped out of family snaps done in the 80's on terrible cameras.
I laid out the back as best I could and sent it to the band for comments. The band's product manager at the record label called up and said the band were not happy and I had to make the pictures bigger. I explained that most of the files were only 20k squares of blurry crap but she said "Just make them bigger".
That was bad enough, but I made them bigger and sent it back.
"Make them bigger still, and draw in some of the missing detail in photoshop so they look like the actual people" I hadn't ever seen the actual people so that was hard, but I did what I could.
This went on and on. Always I had to make them bigger until in the end these five blurry women's faces occupied every single micron of the back cover and were all cut out horribly so that they were as big as possible.
I then got a call telling me they had to be "at least 200% bigger than the last visual".
I asked how, considering that a CD single is a fixed size.
"I'M NOT THE DESIGNER HERE" she shouted down the phone "IF I HAVE TO COME THERE AND DO IT FOR YOU I'M NOT GOING TO PAY YOU FOR IT".
So I told her that I would gladly waive my fee if she could just draw me some crude outlines on the template I attached, showing me where to put each mom and exactly how big.
I then got a sheepish email asking me to proceed without the moms on the back. The thing that PISSES me off about this is that even though its the people being dumb, they never quite realise it and remember the experience as though you were obstructive and difficult to work with.
The same band also sacked me without telling me and commissioned someone else to do their album artwork because they expected a full colour photographic sleeve art and I had "just drawn a really horrible stick man in black and white surrounded by some scribbles and little signs everywhere saying 'trees', 'shrubs', 'skyscrapers' THIS IS NOT WHAT WE WANTED AT ALL"... that was my rough doodle to show them the composition for approval.
Fortunately the person they hired to replace me managed to explain that to them and sent them back to me. Fucking morans.
- Oh fuck that's long. Sorry, I got caught up in old grievances that I should let go of.Horp
- lol 'morans'Stugoo
- wow dude you musta been in fecking tears!!!Projectile
- lol @ rough doodle to show them the composition for approval.rkrd
- i feel your pain, man.geoman2k
- I once made an album cover for a radio station comp while in college. lost my artwork TWICE and then used the doodle/rough sketch as the final album artworktheredmasque
- doodle / rough sketch as final artwork because too sheepish to tell me they lost the cover againtheredmasque
- So imagine my surprise when I saw the final product. loltheredmasque
- Horp's story is hilarious / frightening though!theredmasque