Clients from Hell
Client: “Sorry to cancel at the last minute, but we felt your contract was just… too legal.”
Me: “Well, I should hope so… what exactly was the problem?”
Client: “I mean it’s not very flexible - you ask for payment on such and such a date with this 5% monthly penalty if we don’t make it… it’s all just too legal.”
Clients from Hell
“It seems as though every time we ask you to do any work, we have to pay for it.”
Clients from Hell
Client: “We love the movie you’ve created for us, but it’s just not working for us”
Me: “Ok, what would make it work?”
Client: “We want it to go viral! It needs dancing babies or unicorns”
Clients From Hell
A manager of a small local corporation came to us with a DVD of a very professionally and well done set of interviews with lots of B-Roll of their building and stock footage of cities that they had received as a promotion from another company.
Him: “We want something just like this: Three 5 minute interviews with [these managers] and I’ll do one ten minute segment at the end.”
Me: “Sounds good. What are you looking at for a budget?”
Him: “We figured about $100.”
Me [Amused]: “So what does that $100 cover?”
Him: “Listen, $100 is pretty good money for a job that shouldn’t take you more than two hours.”
Me: “Two hours?”
Him: “You can’t get this done in two hours?!? Three 5 minute interviews, one 10 minute interview. That’s an hour and a half to get the other stuff in a video and put it on a DVDs!”
Clients from Hell
Client: “Did you receive your payment?”
Me: “Yes, but there is a small problem.”
Client: “What is that? You got the cheque right?”
Me: “Yes, but you postdated it 6 months…”
The BBC
Client: “We would like our commercial to run on BBC1.”
Me: “The BBC are not a commercial organisation. They don’t run ads.”
Client: “Well you are supposed to be the big media-man, you need to get us on BBC1!”
Me: “No one can run commercials on the BBC, they don’t show commercials.”
Client: “So we can totally own the BBC if there are no other advertisers! This is going to be great.”
Me: “No. It’s not.”
