“I thought it might have slipped your mind in between naps and graphic novels.”

- Part of an email I got from a client, checking in on my progress, afraid that I had forgotten about his project

Client: “Could you edit this button on the website.”

Me: “Which one are you talking about?”

Client: “This one.”

Me: “Which one?”

Client: “The one my mouse is pointing at, are you blind!?”

Me: “…We’re having this conversation over the phone. I can’t see your mouse.”

Client: “Well then go onto the site! I’m hovering the mouse right over the button. It’s hard to miss!”

Me: “What!?”

“The image of the family walking down the beach… Let’s just retouch it so they’re facing the camera.”

Client: “I tried going to your FTP site to send you a PDF, but it says it’s under construction.”

Me: “Hmm, what program are you using?”

Client: “What do you mean?”

Me: “…What program are you using that’s telling you the site is under construction?”

Client: “None. I just clicked on the link in the email and it came up.”

Me: “No. It’s probably opening in a web browser like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, or Safari. Can you tell me which program it is?”

Client: “Um…email—email program?”

Email correspondence:

Client: “My internet isn’t working, and I need to check my flight number, and my stocks, etc.”

Me: “What are you emailing me from?”

Client: “What do you mean? A computer obviously.”

(6 minutes pass while I wait for him to put it together)

Client: “Hello? Are you going to help me or not??”

I received this email from a client yesterday:

“pleas says me whote transtated name agamalik”

That was the whole thing…Anyone have any guesses!!??

“I wanted to ask, do we have to buy the confetti or will you be printing it?”

- Client, planning his staff party on the cheap

Client: “I bought this Mac from you only 18 months ago, and it’s not working anymore. This is ridiculous!”

Me: (upon inspection) “Well, if you see here, the insides are pretty well full of Coca-Cola.”

Client: “That’s impossible. I drink Pepsi.”

Client: “Is there a pencil sharpener in here I can use?”

I look up from my computer.

Client: “…because there used to be a pencil sharpener in here. It was right over there.”

He points across the room, directly at a pencil sharpener… I stare at him quizzically for a moment.

Me: “ Uh, yes, that’s still a pencil sharpener?”

Client: “Oh, okay, great.”

He walks over to sharpen the pencil. Looking at me the whole time…

“The image is a bit fuzzy… Can you make the pixels rounder?”

“My monitor says ‘no signal’. Do I need to upgrade my Internet service?”

Client: “Hello, I’m looking to make a reservation arriving on the 13th and departing on the 12th.”

Me: “Okay, so you are arriving on the 12th for one night?”

Client: “No, in on the 13th, out on the 12th.”

Me: “So, in on July 13th and out on August 12th?”

Client: “Are you having a bad day?”

Me: “What? No.”

Client: “I think you might be…”

Me: “No, you’re asking me if you can check-out of your room the day before you check-in…”

Client: “I can’t deal with this sort of negativity!”

Me: “Neither can I. Literally!”

Client: “When I Google ‘Open Sundays’, our company website doesn’t even come up.”

Me: “Why would it?”

Client: “Uh, because we’re open Sundays. Obviously.”

Me: “There are a lot of places that are open on Sunday, though.”

Client: “But I wasn’t looking for those other sites, I was looking for ours. Are you even paying attention!?”

Client: “I’m looking at using a combined Blue & Red color that is neither Blue or Red. I would appreciate it if you could check with a few printing experts to see if they can suggest anything.”

Me: “Purple. You—you mean purple.”

Client: “Could you email me the first page of your proposal again? I printed it all out, but then I wrote all over the first page. So I need you to send it again.”

Me: “Do you still have the pdf file you printed it from?”

Client: “Yes.”

Me: “So, maybe you could just print that file again?”

Client: “Oh. You can do that!? Since when?”

“I don’t know. Aren’t colours completely subjective anyways? Everyone’s going to see something different, so you might as well just choose at random.”

- A client I was doing a logo for, expressing some subjectivist existentialism. 

Client: “The word ‘Blog’ sounds too alien. (Does an impression with his arms)’Glip glorp zoop blog, I am a martian’, if you know what I mean.” 

Me: “Um, I guess I do, sure.”

Client: “There’s no humanity in it! I want people to associate our company with humanness.” 

Me: “So you want to remove the blog page?”

Client: “No, keep it. But can we call it our ‘feelings and opinions space’ instead?”

Me: “Sure. The only thing is, it’s on a ‘blogspot’ subdomain.”

Client: “Just change that to a ‘feelingsandopinionsspot’, sub-dome-whatever. Easy, see? You just have to start thinking like me!”

Me: “…”

Client: “Can you make it so when people land on our website, it’s, like, all black with stars coming out of the screen all whoosh whoosh (does the action) like in that screensaver?”

Me: “…”

Client: “With the music from Star Wars.”

Me: “…”

Client: “And it does that for, like, a minute, then stops and they have to click on one of the stars.”

Me: “Any star?”

Client: “No. No. A specific star that they’ll have to find—make it different every time.”

Me: “…”

Client: “Then when they find the right star, there’s like a massive explosion that the site spins out of (does the action), like in the old Batman series”

Me: “For your company site?”

Client: “Yeah”

Me: “The company that cleans up addicts’ used needles from parks and playgrounds?”

Client: “Yeah”

Me: “No”

Client: “…well, you’re not much fun.”

A client of mine likes to send me long emails in Papyrus font.

“Do you know, with your experience, how we can ‘Chinesisize’ the website?”