Sure, I had done some freelance work before. I’ve designed web sites for bands and events, but they were all just friends and I was doing it for free. So, I wouldn’t call them “clients” per se. I already had a full time gig, so I wasn’t looking to start my own LLC or anything, just score some occasional moonlighting projects so I could sit at my iMac in my underwear some evenings and earn some extra loot.
One day I got a call from what I thought was a crazed drunk man. I could barely understand a word he spoke, as he had some kind of European accent. His voice was slurred and strained, as if talking was a grand task. After a laborious and awkward phone conversation of frantically scribbling notes , I got the basics:
- He found me on Google
- He wanted a web site
- Money wasn’t a concern, as he was a retired neurosurgeon
I had my first potential client, someone that had agonized over the proper designer to call and fallen in love with my portfolio. Or maybe I was the only sucker that didn’t hang up on him. Regardless, I had his name, phone number, street address, and I was soon to meet him to discuss transforming a book that he had written and turn it into a web site.
His name was Laurent, and he lived on the 29th floor of some luxury condo building on Walnut Street in the Rittenhouse Square area. It was an area I associated with using the Barnes & Noble bathroom to take a piss or enjoying a La Colombe coffee in the park and pretending to read. The following Saturday, I went to visit him there. He had explained that he was not in very good condition, was unsightly looking and could not go outside, and so meeting at a cafe was not possible. I mentally prepared for the worst, expecting to see the Elephant Man. The elevator quickly zoomed me up to his floor.
I knocked on Laurent’s door and it quickly opened. I looked down and saw a very short man, roughly four foot tall, with a frail build wrapped in a cardigan sweater. He looked to be in his late 60s, hair disheveled, and he moved slowly as if the hump on his back was weighing him down.
“Welcome…I am Laurent,” he said while extending his hand for me to enter.
The first thing that I noticed and could not help staring at was the stunning gorgeous view. To the left was a dining area with a laptop on a glass table and a large window overlooking the Schuylkill River and West Philly. We talked about the view for a while and then he had me sit at the dining room table. The furniture and decorations were very modern and sterile. Combined with random mysterious medical equipment laying around, his condo home felt icy. There were some macaroons in a ceramic dish, and he pointed at me to eat up.
“They call me Napoleon.” he said with a proud smile. “Because I am French, and short…And very stubborn…just as he was.”
Laurent explained to me that he had been writing a medical book of some sort about neurosurgery methods that he had invented. But during the writing of his book, he had fallen into a coma for a while — something to do with a race car driving accident. After regaining consciousness after his coma, and back to living his life, he found a Microsoft Word file on his laptop and realized that he had been writing a book. He had completely forgotten about it, and he didn’t know where he had left off, where he was heading with it, or anything about it. His goal was to feed me finished chapters of his book so that I could create a simple site where you click on each chapter to read it. Easy as pecan pie, I thought, although boring as hell.
The content of his book was way over my head. Who could possibly understand it, aside from another neurosurgeon? Even worse, it was filled with about one hundred “insert slide here” notations, requiring me to scan dozens of X-ray slides of spines. All that I had was a simple flatbed scanner, so I would have to scan each slide one at a time. He also wanted me to work on about thirty illustrations. I explained to him that I couldn’t draw anything (aside from a mean Garfield cartoon), but he insisted that they were simple and didn’t care much how they looked.
While discussing, Laurent’s laptop battery died and he couldn’t find the power cord. “Do you mind if we go into my bedroom?” he asked. “…I have another laptop in there.”
“Sure,” I said, realizing that maybe he didn’t want a web site at all. I figured if he tried anything kinky, I’d be able to easily swat his ass to the ground. I was worried about needles though. Maybe he was going to drug me. He moved sluggishly, but you never know, I thought.
Down the hall, I followed Laurent to his bedroom. He stopped at a photo of him and some woman, pointing out that she was his ex-wife and a bitch. In his bedroom, a laptop sat on his kingsized bed. Medical equipment was all over the place, weird wrappers, adhesives, spools of gauze, a machine of some sort, perhaps for heart monitoring. I sat on his untucked bed next to him and watched him carefully load another Word file. He had a bunch of them and needed to organize them before getting them to me — that is if I decided to take him on. It was already an ordeal.
I escaped without any strange teas shoved at me to drink or needles thrusted into my arms. My paranoia subsided descending the elevator as I tried to come up with a total dollar amount to send Laurent via email. Later that night, I emailed quite a high amount to him in the Statement Of Work, asking for half of it up front. I really didn’t want to do this job, as it wasn’t anything of fun content, and the design would be dull. There was no way to liven it up. I could tell that Laurent would be nagging me often, as he had already asked if I used AOL Instant Messenger.
Laurent responded an hour later. He admitted that half up front was a bit high, but he was willing to comply. He gave me the name of his personal accountant and told me a check would be waiting there for me the following day for pickup. The rush of instant money motivated me. I had half already?! Now, I just needed to head back to Laurent’s to pick up a shoebox of slides, and then bang it all out.
The following two months, I received fragmented cryptic Word docs from Laurent, some just half chapters, some entirely wrong chapters that needed to be rewritten. He liked to use various text colors, multiple font and font sizes — some were annotations to himself that mistakenly included. AOL Instant Messenger proved to be necessary just to get things aligned. He was a faster typer than a talker, so phone calls with him ceased. The scanning was an utter drab. I spent many evenings sipping on beers and singularly scanning vaguely different slides and hoping that I was putting them on the correct pages.
The illustrations that Laurent had me create looked like a first grader drawing a jelly fish, just god awful. Lots of squiggly lines and callout labels on top of a rainbow of colors. Of course, I added gradients and drop shadows to them to give it that “popping jazzy wow factor”, and Laurent loved it. This was seriously the worst looking junk I had ever spewed out of my iMac. I didn’t want to come up with a design solution. Laurent’s insistency of getting it done and the French / English language barrier was too difficult to deal with.
Our conversations were primarily about the book, but Laurent would occasionally mention his bitch ex-wife or bring up the weather and the Phillies. At one point, he wanted to take my girlfriend and I out to dinner, but I didn’t have a girlfriend. I couldn’t fathom the thought of going out to eat with him at some trendy Rittenhouse Square joint, so I just declined graciously and hoped each time that I saw him was the last. Missing slides and files that couldn’t be emailed led me to revisit him in the lobby a few times. His AIM pop-ups led to chats during my day job as well, and I had to get firm with him.
After four months, the web site was completed and I happily picked up the check for the remainder due from Laurent’s accountant. He sent over a few typographical fixes and I gladly updated his site. Laurent sent me emails from his colleagues that boasted what a great achievement it was for him.
A few weeks later, I received a bunch of emails from Laurent, all about five minutes apart. He thought I was ignoring him, but I was just offline for a while. He now wanted me to add an addendum, glossary of terms, and a comment page where viewers could leave comments. I told him that I would need to charge him for this, as it was an extensive job, although mainly text formatting. “Whatever you need,” he said.
So, I charged him a lot again. But this time, I was done in about a week. The comment page was quickly filling up with praise and Laurent was elated. But now he was emailing me about wanting to purchase an iMac, as he knew I was an Apple fan boy and the TV commercials were working their magic on him. “Can you take me to the King of Prussia mall?” he asked.
I realized that I had to end ties with Laurent immediately, as there was no end to his additional assignments. My inbox was flooded with messages from him, and none from any potential girlfriends.
About a week went by and I emailed Laurent to ask him when my final check would be ready for pickup. Days went be and he didn’t reply. I called him, dreading the thought of a tangled conversation with him, but he never picked up.
I suddenly felt gypped. I called his accountant and left multiple messages. Nothing. A couple days later I called again and was told that Laurent had passed away due to some complications with his head trauma. I felt like an insensitive prick. With sighs of grief and blundering jests of sorrow, the accountant explained he was busy with Laurent’s estate and asked how much was owed to me. I told him and the check was mailed to my apartment.
The comments section of the web site transformed into a remembrance forum for the few colleagues and friends of Laurent that had seen the site. I would sit and scroll through the deep pages of content and wonder if Laurent had sent it out to all the people he truly wanted to see it.
The site’s domain name and hosting were set to expire in two years. As the seasons rolled on, I’d occasionally tap the address into my browser to see if anything new had been written about Laurent. And on my last try, there was an error, a problem loading the landing page, as the server could no longer be found. The site was gone.
My First Client
Sure, I had done some freelance work before. I’ve designed web sites for bands and events, but they were all just friends and I was doing it for free. So, I wouldn’t call them “clients” per se. I already had a full time gig, so I wasn’t looking to start my own LLC or anything, just score some occasional moonlighting projects so I could sit at my iMac in my underwear some evenings and earn some extra loot.
One day I got a call from what I thought was a crazed drunk man. I could barely understand a word he spoke, as he had some kind of European accent. His voice was slurred and strained, as if talking was a grand task. After a laborious and awkward phone conversation of frantically scribbling notes , I got the basics:
- He found me on Google
- He wanted a web site
- Money wasn’t a concern, as he was a retired neurosurgeon
I had my first potential client, someone that had agonized over the proper designer to call and fallen in love with my portfolio. Or maybe I was the only sucker that didn’t hang up on him. Regardless, I had his name, phone number, street address, and I was soon to meet him to discuss transforming a book that he had written and turn it into a web site.
His name was Laurent, and he lived on the 29th floor of some luxury condo building on Walnut Street in the Rittenhouse Square area. It was an area I associated with using the Barnes & Noble bathroom to take a piss or enjoying a La Colombe coffee in the park and pretending to read. The following Saturday, I went to visit him there. He had explained that he was not in very good condition, was unsightly looking and could not go outside, and so meeting at a cafe was not possible. I mentally prepared for the worst, expecting to see the Elephant Man. The elevator quickly zoomed me up to his floor.
I knocked on Laurent’s door and it quickly opened. I looked down and saw a very short man, roughly four foot tall, with a frail build wrapped in a cardigan sweater. He looked to be in his late 60s, hair disheveled, and he moved slowly as if the hump on his back was weighing him down.
“Welcome…I am Laurent,” he said while extending his hand for me to enter.
The first thing that I noticed and could not help staring at was the stunning gorgeous view. To the left was a dining area with a laptop on a glass table and a large window overlooking the Schuylkill River and West Philly. We talked about the view for a while and then he had me sit at the dining room table. The furniture and decorations were very modern and sterile. Combined with random mysterious medical equipment laying around, his condo home felt icy. There were some macaroons in a ceramic dish, and he pointed at me to eat up.
“They call me Napoleon.” he said with a proud smile. “Because I am French, and short…And very stubborn…just as he was.”
Laurent explained to me that he had been writing a medical book of some sort about neurosurgery methods that he had invented. But during the writing of his book, he had fallen into a coma for a while — something to do with a race car driving accident. After regaining consciousness after his coma, and back to living his life, he found a Microsoft Word file on his laptop and realized that he had been writing a book. He had completely forgotten about it, and he didn’t know where he had left off, where he was heading with it, or anything about it. His goal was to feed me finished chapters of his book so that I could create a simple site where you click on each chapter to read it. Easy as pecan pie, I thought, although boring as hell.
The content of his book was way over my head. Who could possibly understand it, aside from another neurosurgeon? Even worse, it was filled with about one hundred “insert slide here” notations, requiring me to scan dozens of X-ray slides of spines. All that I had was a simple flatbed scanner, so I would have to scan each slide one at a time. He also wanted me to work on about thirty illustrations. I explained to him that I couldn’t draw anything (aside from a mean Garfield cartoon), but he insisted that they were simple and didn’t care much how they looked.
While discussing, Laurent’s laptop battery died and he couldn’t find the power cord. “Do you mind if we go into my bedroom?” he asked. “…I have another laptop in there.”
“Sure,” I said, realizing that maybe he didn’t want a web site at all. I figured if he tried anything kinky, I’d be able to easily swat his ass to the ground. I was worried about needles though. Maybe he was going to drug me. He moved sluggishly, but you never know, I thought.
Down the hall, I followed Laurent to his bedroom. He stopped at a photo of him and some woman, pointing out that she was his ex-wife and a bitch. In his bedroom, a laptop sat on his kingsized bed. Medical equipment was all over the place, weird wrappers, adhesives, spools of gauze, a machine of some sort, perhaps for heart monitoring. I sat on his untucked bed next to him and watched him carefully load another Word file. He had a bunch of them and needed to organize them before getting them to me — that is if I decided to take him on. It was already an ordeal.
I escaped without any strange teas shoved at me to drink or needles thrusted into my arms. My paranoia subsided descending the elevator as I tried to come up with a total dollar amount to send Laurent via email. Later that night, I emailed quite a high amount to him in the Statement Of Work, asking for half of it up front. I really didn’t want to do this job, as it wasn’t anything of fun content, and the design would be dull. There was no way to liven it up. I could tell that Laurent would be nagging me often, as he had already asked if I used AOL Instant Messenger.
Laurent responded an hour later. He admitted that half up front was a bit high, but he was willing to comply. He gave me the name of his personal accountant and told me a check would be waiting there for me the following day for pickup. The rush of instant money motivated me. I had half already?! Now, I just needed to head back to Laurent’s to pick up a shoebox of slides, and then bang it all out.
The following two months, I received fragmented cryptic Word docs from Laurent, some just half chapters, some entirely wrong chapters that needed to be rewritten. He liked to use various text colors, multiple font and font sizes — some were annotations to himself that mistakenly included. AOL Instant Messenger proved to be necessary just to get things aligned. He was a faster typer than a talker, so phone calls with him ceased. The scanning was an utter drab. I spent many evenings sipping on beers and singularly scanning vaguely different slides and hoping that I was putting them on the correct pages.
The illustrations that Laurent had me create looked like a first grader drawing a jelly fish, just god awful. Lots of squiggly lines and callout labels on top of a rainbow of colors. Of course, I added gradients and drop shadows to them to give it that “popping jazzy wow factor”, and Laurent loved it. This was seriously the worst looking junk I had ever spewed out of my iMac. I didn’t want to come up with a design solution. Laurent’s insistency of getting it done and the French / English language barrier was too difficult to deal with.
Our conversations were primarily about the book, but Laurent would occasionally mention his bitch ex-wife or bring up the weather and the Phillies. At one point, he wanted to take my girlfriend and I out to dinner, but I didn’t have a girlfriend. I couldn’t fathom the thought of going out to eat with him at some trendy Rittenhouse Square joint, so I just declined graciously and hoped each time that I saw him was the last. Missing slides and files that couldn’t be emailed led me to revisit him in the lobby a few times. His AIM pop-ups led to chats during my day job as well, and I had to get firm with him.
After four months, the web site was completed and I happily picked up the check for the remainder due from Laurent’s accountant. He sent over a few typographical fixes and I gladly updated his site. Laurent sent me emails from his colleagues that boasted what a great achievement it was for him.
A few weeks later, I received a bunch of emails from Laurent, all about five minutes apart. He thought I was ignoring him, but I was just offline for a while. He now wanted me to add an addendum, glossary of terms, and a comment page where viewers could leave comments. I told him that I would need to charge him for this, as it was an extensive job, although mainly text formatting. “Whatever you need,” he said.
So, I charged him a lot again. But this time, I was done in about a week. The comment page was quickly filling up with praise and Laurent was elated. But now he was emailing me about wanting to purchase an iMac, as he knew I was an Apple fan boy and the TV commercials were working their magic on him. “Can you take me to the King of Prussia mall?” he asked.
I realized that I had to end ties with Laurent immediately, as there was no end to his additional assignments. My inbox was flooded with messages from him, and none from any potential girlfriends.
About a week went by and I emailed Laurent to ask him when my final check would be ready for pickup. Days went be and he didn’t reply. I called him, dreading the thought of a tangled conversation with him, but he never picked up.
I suddenly felt gypped. I called his accountant and left multiple messages. Nothing. A couple days later I called again and was told that Laurent had passed away due to some complications with his head trauma. I felt like an insensitive prick. With sighs of grief and blundering jests of sorrow, the accountant explained he was busy with Laurent’s estate and asked how much was owed to me. I told him and the check was mailed to my apartment.
The comments section of the web site transformed into a remembrance forum for the few colleagues and friends of Laurent that had seen the site. I would sit and scroll through the deep pages of content and wonder if Laurent had sent it out to all the people he truly wanted to see it.
The site’s domain name and hosting were set to expire in two years. As the seasons rolled on, I’d occasionally tap the address into my browser to see if anything new had been written about Laurent. And on my last try, there was an error, a problem loading the landing page, as the server could no longer be found. The site was gone.