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I am a straightforward person. And I despise emotional manipulation. If you want something you ask for it, and if they don't want to do it you either negotiate to make it worth their while, or you do without it.
Some of my customers think otherwise. And I wish I had some way of knowing who they were before I took their commissions, so I could tell them to sod off. But no, it always comes out towards the end of the process, when there's no going back.
And right now I have a prime example, and I really kind of want to strangle him.
I'm making him a lion costume. I'm running behind schedule with it by quite a bit, but the convention he needs it for isn't until next month, so it's not like I've missed his important deadline. Last night I finished it and e-mailed him some photos. Well, turns out I got one teeny tiny detail wrong. Seems he wanted white ear interiors, and I made them pink.
So the conversation should have gone:
Him: Hey, I'd wanted white not pink here. Can you change it?
Me: Sure, that's no problem.
How it actually went:
Him: Where did the pink come from?"
Me: It came from the fact that animals have pink ear interiors?
Him: Well... but my concept art doesn't show pink there. And, I mean I'm not unhappy, but I really kind of wanted white, and it's in the art, I don't know why you didn't see it. Having pink is just not artistic, it's drawing the eye away from my speshul markings (yes, he actually said that the problem was that it drew the eye away from the stupid neon blue eye markings his otherwise normal lion has.) And gosh, I know it's very late, I guess if you can't change it and still get this to me in time I'll just have to do it myself, I guess I can figure out some way to do it, but I really hoped that it would be white, so I'm kind of disappointed, you know?
Me: *beat head against wall, imagine beating customer to a bloody pulp, reply* I can change it to white, that's no problem.
ARGH. So instead of just asking for what he wants, he has to give me guilt over this being late, and try to make me feel bad about how unhappy he is, AND very nearly calls me an idiot for not seeing the white on his concept art. Gee, that's because I was too busy going back and forth and back and forth with you about every single possible detail of that stupid picture. Seriously, you could spend hours reading the dozens and dozens of e-mails he's sent me about the details of this costume!
He's been one of the pickiest customers I've ever had, and this is the third time we've gone through this stupid "where did X come from?" ringamarole now. (And one of those times was him assuming I'm stupid and had forgotten what he wanted when I'd sent him an unfinished progress photo and it didn't have something he'd asked for. Twit. That's because I haven't added it yet, that's why I said it wasn't finished yet!) He's just incapable of being straightforward, he always has to do this round-about "I'm so disappointed and sad" guilt trip, and if this thing weren't done and I can ship it off tomorrow I'd be seriously considering refunding him his money and telling him to go take a hike.
Some of my customers think otherwise. And I wish I had some way of knowing who they were before I took their commissions, so I could tell them to sod off. But no, it always comes out towards the end of the process, when there's no going back.
And right now I have a prime example, and I really kind of want to strangle him.
I'm making him a lion costume. I'm running behind schedule with it by quite a bit, but the convention he needs it for isn't until next month, so it's not like I've missed his important deadline. Last night I finished it and e-mailed him some photos. Well, turns out I got one teeny tiny detail wrong. Seems he wanted white ear interiors, and I made them pink.
So the conversation should have gone:
Him: Hey, I'd wanted white not pink here. Can you change it?
Me: Sure, that's no problem.
How it actually went:
Him: Where did the pink come from?"
Me: It came from the fact that animals have pink ear interiors?
Him: Well... but my concept art doesn't show pink there. And, I mean I'm not unhappy, but I really kind of wanted white, and it's in the art, I don't know why you didn't see it. Having pink is just not artistic, it's drawing the eye away from my speshul markings (yes, he actually said that the problem was that it drew the eye away from the stupid neon blue eye markings his otherwise normal lion has.) And gosh, I know it's very late, I guess if you can't change it and still get this to me in time I'll just have to do it myself, I guess I can figure out some way to do it, but I really hoped that it would be white, so I'm kind of disappointed, you know?
Me: *beat head against wall, imagine beating customer to a bloody pulp, reply* I can change it to white, that's no problem.
ARGH. So instead of just asking for what he wants, he has to give me guilt over this being late, and try to make me feel bad about how unhappy he is, AND very nearly calls me an idiot for not seeing the white on his concept art. Gee, that's because I was too busy going back and forth and back and forth with you about every single possible detail of that stupid picture. Seriously, you could spend hours reading the dozens and dozens of e-mails he's sent me about the details of this costume!
He's been one of the pickiest customers I've ever had, and this is the third time we've gone through this stupid "where did X come from?" ringamarole now. (And one of those times was him assuming I'm stupid and had forgotten what he wanted when I'd sent him an unfinished progress photo and it didn't have something he'd asked for. Twit. That's because I haven't added it yet, that's why I said it wasn't finished yet!) He's just incapable of being straightforward, he always has to do this round-about "I'm so disappointed and sad" guilt trip, and if this thing weren't done and I can ship it off tomorrow I'd be seriously considering refunding him his money and telling him to go take a hike.
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