Clients can be extreme

(written by lawrence krubner, however indented passages are often quotes). You can contact lawrence at: lawrence@krubner.com, or follow me on Twitter.

Taryn East writes:

ANOTHER DAY…

“That’s it, close the doors, no customers are allowed in!”

“What’s going on? why are you closing up?”

“It’s a disaster! You see this picture here? it should be over there! and it’s hanging askew!”

“Askew? I don’t see it.”

“Look at the other two pictures here… they line up with the edges of the cashier’s desks exactly… but this one? Do you see why it’s so wrong?”

*looks*

*looks some more… *

“I’m… really sorry, but I just don’t se…”

“I don’t believe it. See, does this help?”

*holding up a ruler*… “the third picture is *1cm* over the edge of the desk”

“Oh, I see it now. Yes – we should straighten that up for the next store-refit”

“Next refit!” *shocked look* “It’s a disaster! We can’t wait until the next refit! It’s terribly unprofessional!”

“…but it’s scheduled for tomorrow night, and it’s not like it’s impacting your cashflow…”

“not impacting… !!! … It’s *ruining* our brand-position! How could you have let something like this go out the door! Can’t you get *anything* right? the entire design is ruined!!!”

*stunned look*

“OMG! *that’s* we we aren’t taking any orders, it’s all your fault! we’re losing business because of this! fix it now!”

I recall getting a call at 11 PM on a Friday from a Turkish rug merchant for whom we’d built a website. He was frantic. He was at a friend’s house and seeing his site on a Macintosh for the first time. The images were too bright! His rugs had deep, rich reds, but on the Mac the reds looked almost pink! EMERGENCY!!! We need to take down the site, now, and replace the images with darker images!!!

But what about how they will look on a PC?

Hmmm.

Perhaps you can hire a photographer/digital photo retoucher to optimize the images (a service which we had offered and he had refused).

Clients can be extreme.

Post external references

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    http://rubyglasses.blogspot.com/2011/04/if-bricks-and-mortar-shop-were-run-like.html
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