No joke, I’ve been rejecting calls from a particular client for like three weeks. That’s how I keep her in check. I probably won’t call her back until the beginning of next week, and she’s probably going to read this before then. Why do I routinely have to put my clients on time out? Well, I like recruiting clients directly from Client Hell, which is right in between Tijuana and Rosarito in Mexico.

In my earlier days of freelancing design and development work, I would take any project that would end up on my desk. Regardless of how random a client’s project was, or how much of a douchebag the client was, I would take his piece of shit project because I was, and am, completely addicted to money. After a while, I realized that I’m not the fucking hospital, and I can reject anyone who I don’t want to give amazing results to.

Currently, I am fortunate enough to have most of my personal internet projects doing very well, which leaves me with a good amount of money and the ability to reject client calls and randomly dump shitty clients whenever I feel like it. Trust me, there is nothing worse for workflow or cashflow than a client who is directly from Client Hell. How can you spot these douchebags? Allow me to list a few of my favorite client types from hell:

Your ‘Only’ Client

This is the fuckface who has convinced himself that he is your only client. Accordingly, calls you regularly, blows up your AIM, ICQ, Yahoo!, and MSN messenger accounts late at night, and floods your email box with emails that usually start off with ‘Oh I forgot…’ This guy is tricky because, on the surface, he will acknowledge that you have other clients, but subconsciously he really believes that he is the only one of value. You will look forward to the ‘Ineffective Emailer’ (see below) if you are currently dealing with the ‘only’ client because this client type from hell hardly ever expresses his thoughts in the form of email. Instead of cutting to the chase, he will leave you cryptic voicemail messages. The ‘only’ client also loves calling you repeatedly from multiple numbers to see if you are screening for his call before leaving a voicemail. Quite a tricky guy to deal with.

Stingy Motherfuck

You have to pay to play. It’s as simple as that. If a project comes across my desk less than 10k I’m not taking it. It’s just not worth my time. If the project is less than that amount, and the client isn’t a hottie, I will bid it up to 10k and not be concerned about whether or not I get it. I am sick of dudes who want a pornsite designed for three hundred bucks because some kid down the street just downloaded a bootleg copy of Photoshop CS and claims that he is a web designer. Adult is just like any other business; you need to have money to make money. Get together a solid amount of capital and do it right the first time by hiring someone who knows what the fuck they are doing. Trust me, you will get rich off a good website.

The Stingy Motherfuck is great because he has the time to dispute every line item on every invoice that is mailed to him regardless of how much the line item in question is valued at. He also has no clue as to what is involved in quality consulting work and expects to pay roughly 20% of the actual cost of his project. Watch out for this pennypincher.

Ineffective Emailer

I fear the Ineffective Emailer more than any other client from hell. Perfect example: this blog entry was inspired by what I encountered upon opening my email program a few minutes ago. I noticed thirty new messages. It had been a few hours since I checked my mail so this seemed normal. Upon downloading the messages, I noticed that sixteen of the thirty messages were from the same client with the same subject regarding the same issue. The client I am talking about is the client on time out whom I mentioned earlier, and she loves titling all of her emails with ‘Hey.’ What the fuck? How about writing the subject of the email in the subject field? Sometimes she’ll switch it up on me and title her emails ‘Hey Simon,’ or ‘Hey Simon Question.’ All are equally ineffective. She also has the tendency to shoot me between ten and fifteen emails regarding the same issue every day. I am thinking about writing an email to her with the subject line ‘Hey if you notice you are writing multiple emails to me in the same day why not send me one email at the end of the day with all of your thoughts in it so I don’t have to paste together your thought process throughout your work day?’ That’s a fucking efficient email subject.

Problem is, I have actually had a conversation with her about both of the issues that I just noted and she promised that she would change her ways. I just did a search to bring up every email she has sent to me, and I noticed that every one contains ‘Hey’ in the subject line.

Microsoft Paint Artist

This fucker is great because he thinks he is really cool. He’ll send you over a bitmap image that he made in Microsoft Paint and tell you about how it is much better than the design that a professional image designer made for him. I don’t know if you have used Microsoft Paint lately, but it really sucks. When I say that it really sucks, I mean that it sucks worse than Windows. Microsoft Paint even sucks worse than Internet Explorer and Outlook, and a hybrid Internet Explorer / Outlook program, should one ever come into existence.

Let’s talk about the kind of images you can produce with Microsoft Paint. Well, it doesn’t support anti-aliasing of fonts, so you are going to get some pretty nasty jagged edges on any text, and color is going to look like complete shit. Normally, I would say to each his own because I’m not really a designer, but the ‘Microsoft Paint Artist’ is unique because he wants to pay you to let him design his own site which will surely fail. He will waste your time with phone calls and emails requesting a progress update on his own design, and you can forget about promoting his shitty site in your portfolio.

The best way to deal with any of the clients from hell that I have just mentioned is to drop them completely. Eventually you will work out a sweet mix of cool clients who will sit back and let you do your thing without bugging you, improperly titling emails, sending you shitty bitmaps, or disputing invoices.

In the field of consulting, in my experience at least, project selection is just as important as project completion. If you select a client from hell, you are in for several months of torture, which is not going to be cost effective. When you produce solid results for your clients, you are going to have no problem recruiting more. I had to learn this the hard way by dealing with a few shitty clients, but now I am relatively happy with my client mix. Except for the client currently on time out. She’s probably getting dropped next week unless she gives me some bomb dome in my office like she did at her initial consultation meeting.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 31st, 2006 at 9:27 pm and is filed under Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.