Thanks for the kudos. Still pinching myself. 🙂

Wow, hours before leaving? That's insane! I've had clients ask and I've accommodated in a few cases like that, but it was never a demand. Tempting, I bet, to pretend you didn't see the email. 😉 But one person's lack of manners doesn't mean we have to go there (though it sure is tempting).

You've brought up many situations that are talking points by themselves! Wow, they really have thrown it all at you. Smart of you to recognize the unfairness of those demands, especially the "our work takes precedence" one. If they want that, they pay for that.

Nine years in, you must feel much smarter having faced all that, though. Even if you said yes to it the first time (understandable), I bet you don't now!

Luckily, that job didn't last.

I am SO glad you fired that client! They were holding you down.

KeriLynn, that's the only reason I hung in there. I had three really good years. Then this manager came on board. What a piece of work she was! And I was over them when I realized the owner was pushing that sort of behavior.

You could use Jake Poinier's advice. For clients who always find fault, he builds a minor mistake into the content. 🙂

I have a hard time deciding to let go of clients who aren't necessarily bad clients, but just aren't a good fit for me. I've had a few of clients who were great on paper, but…

* our communications styles didn't mesh and it was stressing me out every time I had to talk with them because I had to work hard to figure out what they were really saying
* they always requested lots of tiny minor revisions and it stressed me out submitting anything because I knew there would always be something "wrong" with it, even if I couldn't see it no matter how much I pored over it looking for "errors"

These aren't terrible things, and other writers would probably love these clients. But, the common thread was, it stressed me out too much to work with them.

I've realized that even if *on paper* the client looks great, if working with them stresses me out all the time, we're not a good fit to work together!

Sounds simple, but it took me a while to realize it's okay to break up with a client for such a "minor" reason like that 😀

This weekend? The latter.

Remember the Late Payer? I fired that client. At first I was willing to put up with the publication's controlling ways because it was simple work, and while it didn't pay well, it paid enough to be good fill-in work.

With every assignment came the marching orders: "Here's a list of sources. You MUST contact all double-starred sources. You MUST have at least X-number of these sources, plus a minimum of TWO retailers. And you MUCH send a progress report every Friday."

You got it. All of those "sources" were advertisers. Oh, and the retailers? With your first assignment they provided an outdated list of retailers (I always Googled names before calling, often the contacts no longer worked there, and a couple times the contacts had died a few years earlier) none of whom ever wanted to be interviewed, since the focus wasn't on their stores.

I hated the monitoring too. I'd understand doing that the first time or two someone works for you, but once you know they always deliver good work on time, take the training wheels off.

They always had excuses not to pay on time (they stated 45 days after acceptance…but to them meant "acceptance" meant the day they decide to put your invoice in for processing, which could be a month after publication). After the owner had blown through all remotely possible excuses and tried using the flu as a reason not to sign checks for three weeks, I threatened legal action. Funny how he was suddenly able to reply to email AND use a pen despite his flu-stricken state. As soon as I cashed the check I severed ties. Oh, and their top two editors got sick of working that way and quit, too!