Yeah, so much for pride in my work. Just got feedback from the client, who a) doesn’t seem to have read a word of my notes explaining the reasoning behind my decisions, and b) seems to have had a completely different understanding from mine of what we were going to provide. I guess this is the other side of being new in my field: on the one hand, I’m new enough to still be really excited about what I do, but on the other hand, I’m new enough that I lack the confidence to say, “No, I’m right, and you’re wrong, and here’s why.” And complicating that, of course, is the fact that we’re an agency and they’re the client, and ultimately, they’re right even when they’re not.
Sure feels like a Monday all of a sudden. Blech.
Did you ever meet my friend Charles in the Twin Cities? It was he (a high-powered advertising copywriter) who taught me that The Client Sucks. Always.
Heh. It turned out not to be much of a big deal after all. This particular client is very direct, which led to me getting a little huffy when I first read her e-mail, but she’s also smart and receptive, which makes her easy to work with. And she’s also in charge of one very tiny site with no budget in a huge ginormous universe of sites, which makes me sympathetic to her, because she genuinely wants to make the right improvements but doesn’t have the budget or permission to do so. After I calmed down, I worked through each of her concerns point by point in writing—didn’t send the notes to her, just used them for reference when we later talked through each of her issues. There was nothing insurmountable at all, just a few things that needed to be clarified. So in a sense, all is more or less well that more or less ends after all…except that it hasn’t ended yet, and we’ll have to see what she says after she reviews round two tomorrow. But I feel much better about how it’s all turning out.