The summer after I graduated college (with a degree in graphic design) and while I was looking for a full time job, I worked with a local author one summer helping insert images into her novel and making graphics for each chapter. She’d been looking for a graphic designer and a friend asked if I was interested, saying it would only be a few weeks. I figured, why not? So we started meeting three times a week and she would give me work to do outside those meetings.

I would come prepared every time we met with everything she’d asked for. But every time she said:

Client: That’s not what I wanted.

Every. Single. Time.

This went on for a while, me doing the best to read her mind and her shooting me down. Eventually I got an email.

Client: Don’t do any more work on novel. Have found a better method. Cannot afford your fees [which $15 an hour]. Please cease all work and send what you have to the editor. Don’t think you are taking this job seriously. We will no longer be working together.

Me: I’m sorry to hear that. I wish you the best of luck on finishing this book.

Honestly, I was kind of relieved. Until a week later, when I got ANOTHER email.

Client: Why haven’t you been in touch? I scheduled a meeting but you didn’t show up. Anyway, here’s some more work for you to do.

Me: Um… You fired me. Last week. And I won’t be returning to work for you, sorry.

I never heard from her again.

Source: Clients from Hell