My Name Is Rich

Ok the title may be a little extreme but I wanted to post a quick and simple fix for a bug that I ran into. Hopefully, this post will help someone else or just serve as a reminder for me if I run into the same problem.

Well here is the background. I was working on a project that needed to load in the Vimeo Video Player, named Moogaloop. This was my first time using it and so far it’s not too bad. A little hiccups here and there but I was able to get the player to load with help from derhess’ helper class. That was until I ran into one problem. It seemed that every time the Moogaloop player would be loaded into my own Flash movie the entire alignment would reset to Top Left. So, after doing a bit of reading and talking to a good friend that works at Vimeo we came up with the workaround of just reverting the alignment back to it’s original value. And that was it. The bug was now “fixed” and my site didn’t have that nasty shift to the side problem.

No, I didn’t hear that from any project manager or fellow employee. I actually read that line from the great site Clients From Hell. As I’ve mentioned before this is one of my favorite sites and this little nugget is proof why.

Client: I want you to do a 3-minute animation for my website. It’s okay if it’s in Flash. How much is that?

Me: That depends, what did you have in mind exactly?

Client: Well, I don’t know. It depends on how much it costs.

Me: The price depends on how complex the designs are, if there is any level of interactivity, if I have to get licensed music, if there is voiceover, etc.

Client: I’m just asking how much 3 minutes of animation is. I don’t know what I want.

Me: Well, the most basic designs start at $3,000 and more complex designs are upwards of $20,000.

Client: WHAT? I thought it would be like $100. I told you, you can do it in Flash.

Me: That’s how much Flash animation costs.

Client: Bullshit. I know Flash does all the animation for you.

direct link.

Now, I wanted to post this because for one reason it makes me laugh and therefore you should all be lol-ing right now. Two, it’s an clear example of a client being uneducated or simply not caring to know what is or isn’t possible despite being told the truth. When a client acts this way it can be a tough time for everyone. Fingers get pointed, lawyers are involved, cats and dogs living together… mass chaos. So, how do we fix this? Do we as developers invoke our civic duty of trying to educate these clients? Yes, I believe so but sometimes it’s not enough and sometimes business is just business. In the above case, I hope the client and developer reach a fair agreement in price or they break times then and there. All we can take from this is a lesson and hope to God that this doesn’t happen to any one of us.