OK so I had a couple of really interesting conversations yesterday. Well when I say interesting I mean interesting in the same way as a brain haemorrhage is interesting.
First thing in the morning I had one of our really annoying clients phone me, chasing up some outstanding work that I haven’t done for him. I apologised for not having looked at it for a week and explained this was because I had been on holiday the previous week and was catching up on the pile of proverbial that had hit the fan in my absence.
I promised I would take a look as soon as I had deleted all my emails marked “urgent” and get a quote over to him by the end of the week.
“A what?” he asked?
“A quote” I said.
“What are you quoting for?” he asked in his idiotic, whiney voice.
I explained that I needed to look in detail at what he was asking me to do and work out roughly how long I think it will take to build. I would multiply the number of hours by my standard hourly rate and that would give me a price. It’s generally how quotes work.
He seemed rather put out by this and said he didn’t realise I would be charging him.
What the hell is wrong with you man?! Do you really expect everything in life to be free? How the hell do you expect me to earn a living if I never charge for work you ignorant, obnoxious prick!
Anyway, later in the day I went to see another client who needed a re-design of his website “urgently”. Now, I’m the sort of person who will deliberately read emails marked with those irritating exclamation marks last. I’ll be the judge of what is important in my own daily schedule thanks matey!
Anyway, I said I can get started as soon as possible. He asked when I thought I could get it finished by. My answer – based on my already obscene workload – was next week at the earliest. He asked if I thought I could get it finished any sooner. I asked how soon he was thinking. His answer was “tomorrow”.
This was 3PM in the afternoon and he wanted me to build a rather complicated content-managed, database driven website in less than a day.
I hate customers, I really do. It seems to me that people are getting more and more ignorant by the day. I swear one of these days I’m going to snap and actually murder one of them. Watch this space.
