But OCCASIONALLY I have to deal with an absolute NIGHTMARE CLIENT. This happens maybe once every two years.
So...backstory on this chick.
She's young, probably around 18 or so. Pretty. Exotic looking semi-Indian girl. (Dots, not feathers.) But a total ditz idiot flake.
She emailed me long ago asking if I could shoot "tomorrow". I was like...uh...I need a *little* more notice than that.
We finally did schedule a date. But she showed up totally unprepared. Limited, terrible, clothing options. Hair and makeup a mess. Only able to give three to five different facial expressions, regardless of the direction I gave her...
Because of the fact that in-person she's *kind* of sweet, and most of her idiot flakiness is from her being young and kind of innocent, I said, you know what, don't worry about it. We'll get you a couple of decent shots to work with today so you can at least have something to start submitting with, but go home, get this, this and this, WASH AND COMB YOUR FREAKING HAIR, and bring these other clothing options and we'll reshoot those really quick another day.
So we plan for this other day a few weeks later. I confirm the night before. And she flakes on me. She goes on to flake and reschedule another 5 or 6 times.
The other (another) annoying thing about this girl is that she almost always ONLY communicates by text message.
And then when we finally DO shoot in December, she's an hour late.
Whatever. I'm actually a pretty good actor and I can put aside my (egg)fury and even act fun and playful in order to get the shoot done and still get her giggling and laughing for the shots I need. (Bitching her out right before we take photos wouldn't do anyone any good.) So we do the shoot. It's fine. But then I don't hear back from her until today...almost four months later.
Here is her email:
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On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 6:27 PM, Rebecca K
Hello Dennis!
I never responded with my final choices for the pictures becasue at the shoot when I told you I didn't have the $50 I owed you you said it was okay andd forget about it, and then later told me before you gave me the final copies I had to give you $50. I didn't have $50 at the time. I paid $800 for the shoot for in total which regardless is really expensive for headshot pictures. When I looked around you can get good qualtiy for a lower price than $300 with more than just 4 edited pictures.
I need the finished edited versions of:
1) FT4A2521
2)FT4A2645
3)FT4A2759
4)FT4A2017
I am in LA and I just got a manager, I need to give him pictures asap because the other copies I got from you are not marketable looks for me.
Please understand my situatioon and provide me with these edited pictures as soon as possible with no extra fee because I cannot even use the two extra pictures you gave me. I need my eyes to look a little brighter because I have brown contacts on now. In the future if I need any further pictures from the account I will gladly pay the fee of $35 per edit.
How c an I send you the $50?
With love,
Rebecca K
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This is so infuriating (eggfury-ating) for so many reasons, some of which include:
A. She is insulting my work. AND THEN asking for a favor.
B. She is telling me there is someone who can do as good a job as me for $300? Please. Maybe this is true if she were smart about it. But I am 99% certain she is not smart about it. And also I kind of have a little headshot ego these days, for semi-good reason.
C. She is asking for me to do EXTRA work and to get it done ASAP and FOR FREE.
D. I don't know if you follow this blog regularly, but I kiiiind of had much better things to do than sit around South Street Seaport twiddling my thumbs and waiting for this chick to maybe show up for round 2 of what I already knew was going to be her highly-irritating photo-shoot. And to not hear back from her for months and get this email, hungover, pretty much out of the blue...well...that's not even a complete sentence or thought because I am still so filled with rage I can only manage to type this all out stream-of-consciousness style.
Anyway. I tried to calm down and collect my thoughts so I could get my feelings across while still being a professional. After all, this girl could still go around the interwebs writing me bad google reviews or blasting my pretty-good reputation on message boards. (If she knew how.) (doubtful.)
So this is the semi-restrained response I was able to come up with...
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Hi Rebecca,
Of course headshots are cheaper in LA. $300...I'm not sure. But you came to me knowing what I charged and what I provided. You made that choice.
I retouched those first two pictures for you because at the time you had been perfectly happy with those choices. There are several pictures from that first shoot that would make for amazing headshots and that I wouldn't hesitate to put on my own site to advertise my work (like 5942 or 5999). The fact that nobody likes those shots is not really my fault...again, you made those choices.
I was trying to be flexible and understanding of your situation so I said you could come back and shoot when you had the proper clothes you needed, because you had shown up completely unprepared for your first shoot with very limited clothing options. You then proceeded to reschedule or simply not-show-up several times when we had been planning to shoot.
When you did finally come to your second shoot you were almost an hour late without even apologizing. Being late and/or flaking is generally considered pretty unprofessional behavior... It's a huge waste of time and money for me when I could have been shooting other clients or working on other projects.
You owed me $50 for the original shoot. If I said, "forget about it" because you didn't have it, I meant forget about it for now and just pay me later. What else am I supposed to say? There's not much I can do when clients show up without full payment other than say you don't get your pictures until you're paid in full...
And now you're asking me to do extra work for you ASAP when I haven't heard from you in months and because you chose the wrong pictures the first time around...
I'm sorry if this email is harsh or unpleasant. It is just frustrating when I am trying to do my job and trying to be as flexible and patient as I can when I am being asked to do extra work or make up for someone else's unpreparedness or bad decisions.
Ultimately I want all my clients to be happy with their photos and to get lots of work from them.
My headshot session includes THREE retouches, so I will do THREE retouches for you upon payment of the final $50 from your session.
Did your manager help you make these new choices? Or are you choosing these on your own? Please make sure that these are choices that he/she will be happy with so you don't end up dissatisfied again.
Send me your final three top choices and I will retouch them for the remaining $50. Anything else will be extra.
You can send payment via www.paypal.com to my email address. Or you can give me a credit card number with expiration date, billing zip code, and CVV numbers from the front and back. Or you can go to your nearest Bank of America and give a teller $50 to deposit into account 00xxx-0xxxx under my name with zip code 10002.
Dennis
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UUUUUGGGGGGGHHHHHhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's a lose-lose situation really. But I felt a great sense of relief after hitting "send".
There you have it. My dream job at its most frustrating.
It's not sooo bad.
But I just needed to vent.
I'm so grateful for all my non-nightmare clients!
