This reminds me of a story about a client I had.

I was creating their business logo so business cards, letter head, logo etc.

I spent around and hour asking what they were looking for and how they wanted their business to look. I then spent a further 4 hours creating 4 different logos, business cards and letter heads, for them to turn round and simply ask for an image to be put on the card and their name. No special tricks, no nice work done. Just an image of the beach.

Creating work for other people is fun and different,. Yet when they come back and ask for nothing you've done, they have no idea how aggrivating it is to put in work that is undermined by their simple ideas.