No pithy paragraph can describe the true clients from hell. The true client from hell has mastered the art of twisting you slowly and deliberately:
* The true client from hell starts off slowly. By the time they're asking for the truly insane things, you've been so beaten down by minor insanities you no longer recognise just how crazy it is. * The true client from hell is the master of forgetting - no explanation you ever provide will stick in their head overnight. * The true client from hell always pays, right on the far edge of acceptable, right up until you really need the money. * The true client from hell has mastered the art of creating emergencies. It requires an awful lot of skill to ignore every situation until it requires urgent action by someone other than themselves. * The true client from hell does not speak English. They speak a language that has exactly the same words as English, but they mean different things. The true client from hell will reveal this at the worst possible moment. * The true client from hell has mastered the Five Project Killers Of Doom: 1. The Import Switcharoo - "We'll start the data collection from scratch" -> "We've changed our mind, we need to import the old data" 2. The Release Day Holiday - "We have to release on XX, I'll be on holiday for 2 weeks before and after that, this is my intern, they can help.." 3. The Late CMS - "We'll pay you when we need to make content changes" -> "The receptionist needs to update the following pages daily" 4. The Hosting Hootnanny - "We'll pay you to host the web app" -> "We need to host it internally on our Windows server managed by *useless external 3rd party red tape specialists*" 5. The Secret Stakeholder - "Oh hey, can you make it so Accounts can approve every online sale before it goes through?" Clients who simply suggest crazy jobs for stupidly low prices are comedy, clients from hell rend your soul with a fine cheese grater, leaving you a broken, desperate creature who flinches whenever the phone rings and can't open the email client in the morning until your first few shots of bourbon. Regards, Richard. I Am Not Suffering From Developer PTSD. I Am Not. I Swear. On 17 February 2010 10:48, Aaron Cooper <[email protected]> wrote: > http://clientsfromhell.tumblr.com/ > > Hours of fun. Or pain. Depending on how familiar some of it is for you. > Aaron > > -- > NZ PHP Users Group: http://groups.google.com/group/nzphpug > To post, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe, send email to > [email protected] -- NZ PHP Users Group: http://groups.google.com/group/nzphpug To post, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected]
