Faceboook wisdom – sometimes no matter how hard you try, some people still suck and you can’t please them. It reflects one or two less recent situations in which the client (a third-party client in these cases, so no worries of embarrassment) didn’t care to instruct or amend or even help us understand. Instead, she insulted, blamed, and took part in a bit of virtual stamping around and pouting. The sum total of her efforts? Zero. All that fussing and fuming got her exactly to the same point we had her in the first place. It wasn’t until she calmed down enough to answer very pointed questions that we made any progress.
A writer friend of mine commented that once he’d tried making an excuse for a boss who was acting up. As he made excuses, his coworker said, “Why can’t it be that he’s just an a-hole?” Why indeed.
I’m a big believer in people behaving a certain way at a certain time for reasons beyond our knowledge or control. I like to try understanding it. But there are some times when that gets me spinning my own mental wheels. Sometimes, people just enjoy acting like jerks. That’s reason enough for me.
It happens – personalities don’t always mix. Genders don’t always mix. Communication styles vary to the point you’d think some of us are speaking in tongue. Sometimes clients just love to shout. It could be that as children, their shouting got them what they wanted, or maybe they were shouted at and think it’s the only way to light a fire under people. Name callers are the worst – the minute you start that with me, buh-bye. I will not tolerate a client who will call me names or label me ineffective because the project’s first draft isn’t quite what they’re looking for. In one case, the name calling and fussing and fuming – it was over one sentence. One. She practically broke blood vessels in both our craniums over it. Two pages of great copy torn to shreds over one sentence. And happily, she amended that one herself. I don’t stick around when people are hell-bent on abusing others.
Damn the contract, damn you commitment to finishing what you started. It’s okay to drop a client who can’t act like a professional. But do yourself a favor – when you sever the relationship, give a clear reason why and do your best not to place blame or fall into that same pattern. For the woman who screeched, I told her I felt our communication styles were too varied to continue. Sure she insulted me, but that’s taking business personally. I stuck to business, which was we weren’t going to work together because what she told me did not equal what I gave her.
What do you do when a client acts up? What’s the worst you’ve encountered?
In the theatre, one gets a lot of screamers. I walk away. When the person's fit grows, I say, "When you are ready to act like a professional adult, I will deal with you. I'm not a nanny; I don't cater to children's tantrums." And I leave.
I don't care how a big a "star" they are, I do not tolerate that type of behavior. Period.
I'm sooo lucky. Haven't had any abusers in the freelance world. Now if you're asking about when I practiced law at big firms with big egos, that's another story! It's the reason I left.
It wasn't a business situation, but I recently encountered a real doozy when doing some volunteer work.
The woman who was supposed to be in charge of the organization never followed through on anything. Since she never responded to other people's requests or comments, people started asking me what was going on, how they could get her to actually do something as simple as hold a meeting. (She abruptly canceled the previous meeting upon getting a call from one disgruntled member. When she told me her reason for canceling, I said, "If this is as important to you as you say it is, why would you let one person's opinion cause you to cancel a meeting?")
When passing along a message to this woman – plus board members and other officials – from people who desperately wanted a meeting to discuss major problems they were having, I said something like, "Perhaps it's time they demand a meeting."
The woman ignored every word other than "demand" and blew her top in a private reply to me. She was saccharine sweet in the "reply all" version, thanking me profusely for my dedication to the group and bringing the situation to her attention (she never did anything to address the problem). Privately, she said my "anger" was what was in the way of the group's progress. She said "demand" was a violent and angry word. I view it as proactive. The irony is that I'm probably the least angry person on the planet!
I kept things civil, but replied saying that it was telling that none of the other people copied in on the same e-mail detected any anger whatsoever, so perhaps she needed to look inward to find the real source of that anger. Then I prepared a message to send her in case she got nasty and I needed to block her from e-mailing me.
She's been pretty quiet ever since, other than asking me fore a re-cap of the meeting those people eventually did set up – and she skipped.
Once I had a client tell me he was going to throw up at the rough cut we had created. We thought he was kidding. He wasn't.
Working in and around Hollywood egos I've had my share of problem clients. My favorite way to handle things thus far is one I witnessed:
This particular client was a screamer. The louder he got the higher people jumped and the further backward they'd bend to try to please him. Nothing seemed to work. He'd scream himself hoarse every day and return the next day freshly gargled to scream some more. One day he was yelling at a co-worker, who stopped him when he paused to take in a breath and asked, "Were you saying something? I can't hear you over all the screaming."
No more yelling for the rest of that project.
It's been awhile since I've had to deal with a client like that.
My son, however, is a different story.
I've had one that I'm still trying to forget. I like thinking that will never happen again…