Monday, August 31, 2020

Karen Uses Up Budget on Ugly Powerpoints, Gets Fired


In a stunning display of pig-headed incompetence, these clients managed to bust their budget on ridiculously bad designs, to the point that it cost Karen her job. For some other wild Karen behavior, here's an HOA Karen who complained about guide dog training. For some unprofessionalism, here's a customer who got mistaken for a job applicant, then the interviewers break the law.

1.

Text - Posted by u/6463694 10 hours ago Client wants us to create a design "exactly" like their ugly Powerpoint. We comply. oc L As a designer, I try to educate my clients on design and why something has to be done a certain way. My agency is not cheap, so we make it quite clear that they are paying for our experience and knowledge, not some Photoshop monkey. Most of the time, my clients are appreciative and enjoy the extra guidance and professional advice. Occasionally, we get "fun" jobs.

2.

Text - The sales pitch went well enough, the business owner, Bob, seemed like a decent guy and happy to trust our professional expertise. However, shortly after signing the deal, he brought on a new manager, Karen, who was put in charge of marketing, including the new website we were just contracted to do. It quickly became clear that Karen thought of herself as a multi-disciplinary genius and despises us because she thinks she can do better than a professional design agency. Karen loves sending

3.

Text - Karen did not like it one bit. Karen was rude, uncooperative, and removed Bob from the email threads when we tried to reach out to him to get his opinion. When we sent over a design, she would bitch about how it wasn't want she wanted, and scream over the phone while our team patiently explained why we couldn't design exactly as she wanted. Mainly: It would be ugly as heck and nobody would want to do business with them with a website like that. The last time Karen bitched about how we wer

4.

Text - Once again, Karen sent over a ridiculous 70mb Powerpoint. If we followed it exactly, it would look like a website from the 90s with the worst UX ever. We went through every little pixel of her PPT, asking her "So do you want us to copy this... EXACTLY?" To which she would reply with a smug YES. So we documented her instructions down to the letter to cover our asses. Once again, we asked Bob: "Are you SURE?" Reply: "Yes please hurry up and make those changes exactly as she asked." Okie dok

5.

Text - Karen once again replied, taking Bob out of the loop, "PERFECT! Now, it wasn't so hard to do things EXACTLY ASK I ASKED, was it? ;)". We waited. Bob exploded, demanding a meeting the very next day to explain why we were delivering such shoddy work. We go to the meeting and Karen starts demanding that we propose a completely new design. We presented all past designs, the document in which Karen confirmed that she wanted all the changes, the countless emails in which we painstakingly explai

6.

Text - I then pull out the contract and calmly point out the portion which stated the number of design proposals we would create. Karen had used up all of it. I had reminded her that she was limited to X number of proposals, but she clearly didn't remember any of it because she didn't bother reading our emails, and would keep talking or yelling over us when she spoke on the phone. I looked Bob in the eye and told him he could either pay extra for each additional new proposal Karen wants, or choo

7.

Text - I shrug. It's his business, and we're getting paid anyway, and he clearly doesn't appreciate our design expertise after all. The less time we spend arguing with them, the more time we could use to focus on my appreciative, good clients. We make Bob and Karen sign off on the design, and finish up the project quickly. Karen still tries to be difficult, but we stick to the contracted terms and she couldn't do anything. 2 months after the project ended, I get a call from Bob. He began with so

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