The 20 most recent Stupid Client Quotes from Clientcopia. http://clientcopia.com/ Copyright 2005 Clientcopia
Boss calls: Hey, could you come to my office?

As I get there, she looks worried and start explaining that her
outlook is gone, that "it was here yesterday", and she cant
afford to lose it, for there's too much information stored in
the emails.

I check: the quick access toolbar is missing. Two clicks later,
tadaa, a wild outlook appears.

How come someone is qualified to be called 'boss', (or director,
as she says) and doesnt know windows basics? ]]> http://www.clientcopia.com/quotes.php?id=7730 Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:09:38 EST
Not a client, but a boss:

I am a curriculum designer working for a small company. I WRITE textbooks and workbooks. I don't lay them out or anything like that. I make the content.
I know very, very little about web design. But because they both have "design" in the title, guess what my boss thinks I should be able to do?
He has me DESIGNING a new logo and website for his company. While he writes workbooks because "they have to get done!" I suppose the idea of letting the writer make the workbooks and HIRING someone qualified to do the artistic stuff is just too out there for him.

I can't wait to quit this job. ]]> http://www.clientcopia.com/quotes.php?id=7729 Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:54:20 EST
From a client in our print design studio, "Can you make that white text stand out a
little bit more?...make it a little bit brighter?"

um.no... ]]> http://www.clientcopia.com/quotes.php?id=7728 Thu, 22 Jul 2010 13:06:38 EST
Back in the early 90's, I was working for a small business, when I overheard my Boss arguing with the IT girl over an upgrade to his computer in order to run a piece of software.

She was telling him his machine needed more RAM...he was arguing that his machine had plenty of RAM, but needed more 'Meg'.

Because of this, he was refusing to hand over the cash to pay for the memory upgrade because the IT girl 'obviously had no clue what she was talking about.'

I eventually walked over and tried to help her explain that 'Meg' is short for 'Megabyte', which is an amount of RAM. I even went so far as to explain that what he was saying was he equivalent of "My car has plenty of gas, it just needs more gallons!"

Eventually, after arguing for nearly 45 minutes, Boss man stamps out of the office to go buy his 'meg' himself.

About an hour later he stamps back into the office with a satisfied smile on his face.

At lunch, the IT girl told me what happened. He'd stamped into her office, slapped a 16mb SIMM on her desk and said "The idiot assistant at the store tried to tell me the same bullshit you did, but I spoke to his boss and he sorted it out."

She showed me the envelope the RAM had come in, scribbled on the back was "16 megabytes of MEG".

We learned a lot about how deal with the boss from that heroic computer store owner. ]]> http://www.clientcopia.com/quotes.php?id=7727 Wed, 21 Jul 2010 10:06:21 EST
From a leading social website:

"*Note: Membership will be billed in one easy payment." ]]> http://www.clientcopia.com/quotes.php?id=7726 Tue, 20 Jul 2010 08:16:42 EST
I used to be part of a phone support group for a large retail-photography company. I swear, some of those people had the same mental age as the children they were shooting.

Now bear in mind, this is a *professional* photography studio. Both the $2000 camera and the $5000+ multiple-source lighting system have been painstakingly calibrated for exposure (brightness) and color balance.

The lighting system has a loud, deliberately obnoxious alarm beeper that goes off whenever there's a problem with the flash, and you'd have to be blind not to see the flash going off.

Despite all these precautions, I still got the following call at least twice a day:

Caller: All my pictures came out totally black, can you fix it?

Me: I'll see what I can do, did the flash go off when you took a picture?

Caller: I think so, the beeper went off every time I pushed the silver button.

Me: I'm sorry ma'am, that's the alarm. I can help you fix the lighting system, but you'll have to reshoot.

Caller: But I can't, the family's already gone home while the mom picks out the pictures.

Me: *facepalm*

Caller: You can fix it though, it's a digital camera, right?

Me, thinking [**Sure, let me just hop in my time-machine so I can magically recover all the light photons that never made it to your camera...**]


Despite what CSI makes you think, no amount of retouching can fix a completely unexposed picture, no matter how expensive the camera is. Underexposed, yes. Unexposed, no. ]]> http://www.clientcopia.com/quotes.php?id=7725 Sun, 18 Jul 2010 23:29:35 EST
Customer: Hi, I just bought a laptop computer that I want to play a CD in, but it's not working.
Me: What is the problem, what isn't working?
Customer: The CD tray is not coming out.
Me: Well, there are a few things that can be the pr....(I then get interrupted)
Customer: Look, I opened up the laptop, and pressed the button for the CD tray to come out. It has not come out. What is the problem!?!?!?!?!?!
Me: Well, first things first, is the computer on?
Customer: You have to turn the computer on to put CD's in!?!?

-- Click -- ]]> http://www.clientcopia.com/quotes.php?id=7724 Sun, 18 Jul 2010 22:22:46 EST
During college (back in the pre-digital era), I worked as a photo technician for a chain drugstore in a questionable neighborhood.

Our customers would bring in blatantly pornographic pictures about twice a week on average, and the company's policy was to print them as long as they didn't contain anything illegal.

The company also had a policy of buying back prints that the customer's didn't like, no-questions-asked, but every last piece of photo-paper had to be accounted for.

Here's what happened when the two policies met...


Customer: [opens a box of 100% porn photos and begins sorting through them, then hands me back about 1/4 of the roll and asks for a refund.]

Me: ...and your refund, including tax is $1.38. [dumping photos into the bin for the nightly waste inventory]

Customer (suddenly nervous): Wait - What are you going to do with those? ]]> http://www.clientcopia.com/quotes.php?id=7723 Sat, 17 Jul 2010 22:28:52 EST
From an Email:

Can I call you? I can"t get on my email ]]> http://www.clientcopia.com/quotes.php?id=7722 Fri, 16 Jul 2010 14:10:37 EST
Background: Computer Support for a large educational institution, one of the things
we provide are loaner laptops for staff that normally use desktop computers.

Got one back today and while checking it found a nail clipping stuck under a key on
the keyboard. ... ?!? ]]> http://www.clientcopia.com/quotes.php?id=7721 Thu, 15 Jul 2010 22:28:16 EST
"Getting a template for the newsletter is all very nice, but will we be able to edit it?" ]]> http://www.clientcopia.com/quotes.php?id=7720 Thu, 15 Jul 2010 10:43:43 EST
Client calls me yesterday to say her laptop isn't starting up - it gets to the grey Apple
logo and then no further. I say bring it over tomorrow and I'll sort it out.

Today, the client turns up on my doorstep with her MacBook Pro - in pieces! She'd
removed the hard drive and installed it into an external caddy to "see if it would work" I
end up with a bag of screws, bolts and internal frame members and a hard drive with a
whole load of bent pins on the data port.

Tomorrow, I shall hand it all back, with a fully functioning disk drive and the same bag
of bits and tell her to reassemble the damn thing herself as I will not be responsible for
any damage she might have caused to her own machine by her incompetent actions.

What next? People doing their own appendectomies? ]]> http://www.clientcopia.com/quotes.php?id=7719 Wed, 14 Jul 2010 16:58:55 EST
A user called about an urgent problem with her email.
"Is there something wrong with email? Has anyone else called? Outlook keeps crashing when I try and open email."

After a remote desktop session we figured out it was just one email with the issue.
The email was 5MB with no attachments. Guessing it had embedded pictures I opened up the email and waiting for Outlook to open the email.

After the email was open, scrolling down the email showed no embedded files or pictures.
The full 5MB of this email was nothing but text!
The user was using her Outlook as an IM Program apparently.




]]> http://www.clientcopia.com/quotes.php?id=7718 Mon, 12 Jul 2010 12:39:26 EST
Me: "Could you please confirm that the design is approved so we can proceed with production. Thanks."
Client: "Yes, it is currently approved" ]]> http://www.clientcopia.com/quotes.php?id=7717 Tue, 06 Jul 2010 22:59:43 EST
When I was working in the helpdesk of a hosting company, a customer called saying his server was down, and he couldn't connect to it through remote desktop. I asked him what he was doing the last time he was connected, and he told me: "All was just as usual, then I disconnected using Start > Shut Down".

So many as€·#=%$s... So few bullets... ]]> http://www.clientcopia.com/quotes.php?id=7716 Mon, 05 Jul 2010 02:59:50 EST
Traveled to a remote office to fix an issue with the server. While there, user comes in with a problem.

User: "I was having trouble with my email, so I 'reset' my account and I've now lost all my subfolders in my inbox. I really need to get those back because they're critical!"

Went to the user's computer and clicked the PLUS symbol next to the word 'INBOX'.

Crisis averted. ]]> http://www.clientcopia.com/quotes.php?id=7715 Thu, 01 Jul 2010 10:50:29 EST
Designing a Tomato box, sent it out for approval....

Client: " The Tomatoes are not round enough. "

Me: ( Revised the graphic and sent it out again for approval. )

Client: " Could you make it rounder? "

Me: I'm sorry, the Tomatoes are perfectly circle.

Client: " Ok, then make the circle rounder."

Me: ................

]]> http://www.clientcopia.com/quotes.php?id=7714 Wed, 30 Jun 2010 12:37:13 EST
When I used to work in the special projects divisions of a large international company:

Project:
PowerPoint presentation to be used for end of year report for the top dogs at the firm. (Each section was created for a different VP)

VP:
Hands me a blank piece of paper. "I need this chart put into the PowerPoint presentation tonight."

Me:
It's a blank page.

VP:
Of course it is. The information on that chart is confidential!

(I don't know why he bothered to hand me a blank piece of paper...I was very tempted to put a page into his section of the PP presentation with the words - confidential chart to go here). ]]> http://www.clientcopia.com/quotes.php?id=7713 Wed, 30 Jun 2010 12:32:15 EST
Couple of years ago I got called from an customer to witch I have just installed a new PC. When I picked up the phone, there is some woman screaming on the phone that her brand new PC is not working ! Customer: How can you sell me this piece of crap it doesn't work at all! Me: Ok , what is the problem? I have installed it and tested for couple of days and didn't see any problem with it. Customer: It just doesn't work at all ! I work on it all day. Go home, and on the next day it doesn't have anything on it! Me: Ok, I'll be there in 30 min. to check it out.
I go to her office, check the PC logs and etc.. works ok to me.. Then I asked her to show me what is she doing to have that problem. So she starts with opening some Word document writing some things in it for all day and then turns it off.. Then I see her - typing in word and reaching for the button of the PC - puffff shut it down without saving without anything.... Well it took me 3 vissits and 2 hours on the phone to teach her how to save her documents and shut downs her PC... And in the end she didn't wanted to pay my hours because the PC wasn't doing that stuff for her.... ]]> http://www.clientcopia.com/quotes.php?id=7712 Wed, 30 Jun 2010 06:20:20 EST
Background first, we have laptops we loan to staff, and other staff have laptops
assigned to them, they all have wireless capability and should work in any hotel/motel
environment or at home... so today I get this question which is so lacking in
information needed to understand what they want, especially when they already do
what they need to do from home...

Im going to be away ... all next week but need to have access to work stuff on my
laptop. Please remind me how to do this. ]]> http://www.clientcopia.com/quotes.php?id=7711 Tue, 29 Jun 2010 20:41:59 EST