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Five lines that are guaranteed to drive me insane
As you may or may not know I run a successful writing business that provides written text for websites. We do a little bit of mainstream work but 95% of our time is taken up work for adult webmasters. We write gallery descriptions, stories, copy, site descriptions, model bios, text that's attractive for search engines, blog entries and just about anything else that a Webmaster needs that involves words.

The business originally started with just me, then Steve started writing for me and from there it has just grown to the point where I have seven core writers and a few very casual writers too.

It may come as a surprise to those of you who think that selling adult products is all about enticing people with pictures but every one of my core writers is working to their absolute capacity. At the same time I'm also working to capacity and things have got so busy that Steve and I have just about given up the thought of having weekends off. We do give our writers time off but for Steve and me Saturdays and Sundays are just business as usual. You see, more and more people are realizing that words are important too.

When you're working to the limit like that scheduling work becomes really important. Everyone wants their work done to a deadline but for us to be able to do that we need to be able to rely on the people who are sending us work. All it takes is just one little delay and weeks of scheduling can be thrown into chaos and then everyone suffers.

I'm not quite ready to start after all
Fortunately this one only happens occasionally. A client books up some work and pays for it. We negotiate a deadline and he promises to send us an outline of what he wants done. So I look at what work we have on and then fit it into their schedule.

The day comes for us to start work and there's no outline. I contact the client and get the line that I hate to hear. The client isn't ready but we are and we have other work scheduled - with a deadline - that we have to start when the first guy's work is finished. We can't wait, we have to move on to the next client and somehow fit the first guy in when he finally decides that he's ready to go.

I'm trying to do that with one client right now and there has already been several starts and stops with his work.

Can you just change this a little bit for me?
This one has been the biggest nuisance for me this year. One client sent us a huge amount of work and we got started on it with no problems. The deadline was definitely achievable ... but then he wanted to change some of the details. So we worked to accommodate the changes ... but then he changed them again ... and again.

By the time we had finished his work he had changed the list that we were working from four times and everyone was totally confused as to which list we were supposed to be using. It got even worse after that when someone at his end changed the order in which we had sent the work to him but that's for him to sort out.

Can you just do this bit for me first? It's urgent.
That's the same guy who changed his list four times. At least six times through that job he asked as to squeeze in other work for him ... and we did. But then he complained that we had missed the deadline with the first lot of work even though he was aware that the writer working on the original project was also the only writer who had the skills to do the urgent work he wanted done.

I'm sure you can imagine what my approach will be the next time someone asks me to squeeze some extra work in for them. At least the frustration levels have settled to the point where I won't tear my hair out when someone asks me that question ... at least I don't think I will.

I forgot to send this to you the other day/week/month. Can you do it now for me?
Sure, we love working at 8 o'clock on a Sunday night. That's what we live for and what is life without another challenge to overcome?

Can't you give me a discount on that?
Sure, the price I quoted you was the absolute rock bottom price but we can give you a further discount. Our writers don't need to eat this week so I'm going to knock another 25% off just for you because you've never done any business with us before and you're never likely to ever again.

Do you detect a note of cynicism creeping into my voice here? Now whatever gave you that idea? I seriously do love my work, it's just some clients I have trouble coping with ...and that's on my good days.