FreelanceSweat

After designing and maintaining his website for a year, a client fired me from the gig, then asked me to teach his secretary — who he said was “learning HTML from her boyfriend” — what to do.

Obviously the client mucked up the transition/exit step sequence; told him I’d send her all the server’s access info and documentation (it was theirs, after all), but I’d charge him hourly for any training. He declined. So I emailed all the info to the young woman.

I got a call from her the next day.

HER: I got that email you sent. What’s your email address?

ME: Um, it’s in that email you got.

HER: No it isn’t. The bottom of the page only has a link to your website.

ME: Check the FROM: field.

HER: Huh?

ME: Nevermind. It’s myemail@address.com.

HER: What about the casing?

ME: Casing?

HER: Yeah. Upper and lower casing. My boyfriend said it’s very important to get that absolutely right.

ME: It’s an email address; it doesn’t matter. It does for Web URLs, at least for anything after the domain name, but not email ad…

HER: My boyfriend knows all about this junk, so quit trying to trick me! What’s the casing?

ME: Very well. It’s mYeMaIl@aDdReSs.CoM.

I was rehired within two months, even after I jacked up my rates.

Eldon Sarte
http://eldonsarte.com

On the phone, while trying to collect an overdue invoice (after emailing an invoice and statements for a few months)…

CLIENT: Sorry, we can’t pay this.

ME: Why not?

CLIENT: You didn’t give us an invoice.

ME: I emailed it to you, direct to your attention. Multiple times. And statements. Multiple times. Your email system even automatically acknowledged receipt each time! I’ve got it all right here on fi…

CLIENT: We need a hard copy before we can pay it.

MY BRAIN: For the love of…
ME: Then just print out the invoices and statements I sent you.

CLIENT: Can’t do that. We’re now officially a Green Business — we got rid of all our printers so we won’t be tempted to use them.

ME: …

Eldon Sarte
http://eldonsarte.com

Thanks to everyone who’s hung around, waiting for updates to the site.

Sorry for the delay. I do indeed have lots of stories — personal and from friends — I’ve been meaning to post, but I was purposely holding off a bit initially, for a simple reason: Since a lot of our “freelance horror stories” tend to sound the same, I didn’t want to discourage you from submitting your own stories since there already was a similar post already published here. (As you may or may not know, you could get an Amazon gift card for submitting your stories!)

Well, as you can see, the flood of submissions hasn’t happened, or has yet to happen. No biggie. I’ll just start posting what I’ve got/have heard/have been told. We’ll just play the rest of it by ear and see how it goes.

But that doesn’t, of course, fully explain, the dead silence for months. Well, I’ve got somewhat of a good excuse. I’ve been busy prepping for what my wife eventually gave me a couple of weeks ago: two brand new daughters! Here they are — that’s Sarah Elizabeth on the left and Alexa Victoria on the right. I decided to use the pic with them in their small car seats so you see how really tiny they are, being preemies. With their 2yo brother, Daniel, that makes for a pretty full and quite interesting work-at-home freelancer household. Well, maybe they’ll end up giving me more fodder for future posts!

Onwards, my friends. Here we go…

Eldon Sarte
http://eldonsarte.com

This exchange happened fairly recently.

CLIENT: I need a website. I have a thriving network marketing business and obviously the World Wide Web should help me grow even more!

MY BRAIN: MLM? Oh crap.
MY MOUTH: OK. Want me to write your content too, or would you prefer to provide all that?

CLIENT: Why does it matter?

MY BRAIN: There’s more work, genius.
MY MOUTH: Well, copywriting is additional work, so I charge a bit extra if you want that on top of Web design. The project will cost less if the content’s all from you and I don’t…

CLIENT: Well, I was thinking to pay you a percentage of what I make through the website.

MY BRAIN: Uh-huh.
MY MOUTH: Uh-huh.

CLIENT: It’ll work out nicely for you. I make $200K a year!

MY BRAIN: Hmmmm…
MY MOUTH: What percentage? And bear in mind that if I take this on, the cut will be from the whole $200K, and more as it grows of course, since with typical MLM ops I don’t think you can isolate…

CLIENT: Well, I’m not quite making $200K just yet.

MY BRAIN: …
MY MOUTH: …

CLIENT: I just started last month, but I now have 7 in my downline, more than twice the projected 3! At this rate, I’ll be pulling in $200K annually in a year or sooner!

MY BRAIN: Mothereffing hell…
MY MOUTH: Bringing your attention back to how much I charge to do the work, I require 50% of the estimated job cost upfront, then [yada yada yada]

Eldon Sarte
http://eldonsarte.com

Back when I built custom MS-DOS database applications (Clipper), one of my clients was a small partnership which also had some private investors. It eventually came to light (to me, anyway, since I worked closely with him) that the junior partner was going to make a move for total control of the operation.

JR. PARTNER: I’ll be meeting with the investors tomorrow night.

ME: OK.

JR. PARTNER: I’m going to tell them that [Sr. Partner] is basically incompetent, and that I should be put in charge of the business.

ME: Oh, OK.

He then goes into an extensive monologue on company “problems” and his plans, all while I’m fiddling around with the app on the PC. Eventually, he winds down.

JR. PARTNER: So, are you with me?

ME: Huh?

JR. PARTNER: Are you going to go to the meeting with the investors with me tomorrow night and back up my position?

ME: You know, this really is none of my business. I’m just the guy you guys hired to build this app for you.

JR. PARTNER: So you won’t be there?

ME: No, I don’t think so.

I then start printing a bunch of transaction and sales reports for him to look over, which, if memory serves, was really why we were having that particular meeting in the first place. He looks over them as the printer spits out the pages.

JR. PARTNER: These are too good.

ME: Huh?

JR. PARTNER: The numbers. Too good. The investors will side with him.

ME: …

JR. PARTNER: Can you do something about these reports?

ME: What do you mean, reformat them?

JR. PARTNER: No, the numbers. Change them. Make them look a lot worse.

ME: …

Talk about warning signs. gave him some technical BS on why the data couldn’t be changed after it’s been reported and hurriedly wrapped up all my work in less than a week. Made sure I had my final check in hand upon installation of the last deliverable, and I was out of there. Last I heard, the company had folded within 3 months.

Eldon Sarte
http://eldonsarte.com