Hurry Up and Wait

Summary

"

This is a situation that I think all web designers can relate to. Client comes to you in need of a website to promote their business and create an image online. Fair enough. Business goes as normal: deposit received, setup a meeting to go over content and begin to work on a mockup. Pretty straightforward!

Now we're going to skip a few steps ahead so that I can save you from reading the unexciting procedures involved in a web project. So we've got an approved mockup and we're to the point where we're inputting, arranging and formatting content as needed. Now we're at a stopping point: a small list of pages are incomplete due to the fact that the client fails to deliver on their end. You try endlessly to squeeze the material out of them but to no avail. No promised photography delivered (even after offering photograhpy services to try and peak interest), no text content, not even an outline to give direction on the now stale and empty pages that halt the entire train.

The dust settles?

Months go by and you've since closed out the project and billed the client for whatever time may have gone above and beyond the aforementioned deposit. Fair enough. That's how a normal business works and this is brought to the client's attention on numerous occasions.

Then one day, out of the blue, the client emails you and expects you to immediately continue production on their website, even though you've still not received the photographs and content they've promised on 2-3 prior occasions. Of course your current projects are going to take precedence because that's the way things work. It's pretty self-explanatory. So you tell them that you currently can't take on their project until a later time due to the vast amount of work you have at hand. Client reluctantly agrees and disappears back into the busy black abyss that procrastinating clients like to fall back on when they can't admit that they're, well, procrastinators.

The email

Time passes and you continue to work on the projects of importance. Not to say that anyone else is unimportant but when you, the client, can't find the time to at least organize material for the website you claim to be so important to you, then you fall by the wayside and your level of importance diminishes slightly. This should be common business sense. Then one day you receive the irate email. The one that contains things like

"you've put me off", "I want my website on disc", "very unhappy customer", etc.

Let's rewind for a second. This is the client that falls off the face of earth as if the world were flat and they were sailing with a blindfold on. The client that promises you material and never delivers. The client that repeatedly makes the excuse "I've just been so busy...". Yes, the procrastinator. The one that makes the project out to be of the utmost importance and then disappears into the night as if they were Batman himself. Hurry up and wait. And now, me, the designer, is the one at fault. I'm the one that put said client off and shunned them aside as if their project were of no significance.

Need I say more?

Seriously, do I need to say anything else? Is my frustration and anger not justified? To some people it may seem petty but it's something of a pet peeve of mine. I hate taking the heat for something when I've held my end up. It's something that urks me to no end.

End of rant.