You just can’t please some folks, can you?

You know that’s the truth!

And all you can do is maliciously comply and roll with the punches with bosses and supervisors who give you mixed messages.

And hopefully they’ll eventually get the message!

Check out how this worker handled a situation like this!

Pay for 20 hours of work, get 20 hours of work.

“I’ll begin by saying I work for a software company.

I was working on a project for a client, to customize part of the software and stuff. The project was very open-ended, mostly because the client kept changing their mind about what they wanted, so the contract was “time and materials”.

The directions were clear.

Meaning that I had an hourly rate, I would log all the time worked on the project (in half hour intervals), and every week my company would bill the client company for the hours spent on the project. The client said they didn’t care how much effort it took; they wanted a good product and they wanted it before the end of the year, so they could present it at their big internal meeting.

At the beginning, the project went great. Every week I had a meeting with the client and I would get feedback on the progress, as well as new requests they might have, and then I’d spend however long it took to implement the changes.

I’d bill them 15 hours, 20 hours, 25 hours, or however many it had been. Slowly, over time, the client started requesting more and more. I told them during the meeting “this feature will require X days of work”, “changing that will require Y more days” and so on, but again the client insisted they needed all those extra features.

The client had a problem.

They also complained that the project wasn’t advancing quickly enough, and insisted they needed the project completed before the end of the year.

They made some changes and the client was happy…for a little while…

I talked to my manager and explained the situation. To be able to finish quickly enough, I needed to work full time on this project. My manager moved my other projects to different people, and we told the client that until the end of the year I would work full time on the project to ensure we will hit all the deadlines. The client was overjoyed… for about a month.

The following month, the client is mad and is demanding to know why we’re charging them so much. I pull out my time sheets and explain that, as agreed, I’ve been working full time (and more) on their project. Every week I’ve logged between 45 and 50 hours of work, and I have detailed notes specifying exactly how I’ve spent that time.

It all seemed to make sense…to everyone but the client.

I’m not particularly concerned about being accused of stealing time, because I’m a fast worker and most tasks have been completed more quickly than the original estimates. Besides I point out that I’m now working twice as many hours as before, so it’s costing the client twice as much per week, but I’m also completing tasks twice as quickly and will be finished in half the time.

The client, unfortunately, doesn’t appreciate my use of logical reasoning. They accuse my company of taking advantage and they say that starting from next week they no longer want to pay for more than 20 hours of work per week. I tell them, sure, we can do that, but it’s October already and you want the project completed by the end of the year.

The client is clear about how many hours they want them to work.

Given the amount of work still left to do, I will need more hours to finish. The client doesn’t let me explain and says that we’re not to bill them for anything more than 20 hours per week, they will not pay us for more than 20 hours per week, and they want this in writing or they’ll cancel the entire project.

And my manager says, of course, the customer is always right. (This was an evil evil act of malicious compliance, so please read until the end before getting angry at my manager, he’s a great guy.)

You got it!

So my manager sends the client an email confirming that, starting from [date], my engagement with them will be capped at a maximum of 20 hours per week. He also attaches a spreadsheet of the estimated time to develop all the new features of the project, how many hours I’d spent so far, and how many hours I projected to spend to complete it. The client smugly acknowledges this.

Before the end of the week, my manager gives me back my other project, as well as a new one. You see, at the time we were understaffed because we were growing too quickly, and we were getting more requests for new projects that we could handle.

So there would have been no point in stealing hours from this client and ******* them off, when we can take on a couple of new clients instead and bill everyone for the actual work and keep everyone happy.

The new rules are clear…again…

So, starting from next week, my new schedule is 20 hours with Client, 10 hours with client B and 15 hours with client C. It works great for me. It doesn’t work that great for Client. At our next weekly meeting, one of the features they requested isn’t ready yet.

At the following meeting, I tell them we’ll need to move the deadline for the next milestone by two weeks. Then it’s the beginning of December, and they ask me if I would be able to make some last minute changes and still deliver the project by the end of the year, and I say oh there is no way the project can be finished by the end of the year.

It was time for another meeting.

We have yet another meeting with the client and my manager. My manager asks me why I’m missing this huge deadline. I say: do you remember when I was talking about all the work that still needed to be done and how long it would take? In October we estimated the project needed another 60 days of work.

I worked 10 days in October and 10 days in November, because you said 20 hours max per week. It’s going to take about 40 more days of work to finish the project. It’s December. Even if I work overtime, there are not 40 days left before the end of the year.

The client acted clueless.

Manager is like, yep, makes perfect sense. Client does the shocked pikachu face.

They act like this is the first they’ve heard about not being able to meet the deadlines, even though I’ve been telling them for weeks. Unfortunately they are the kind of person who never listens to what they don’t want to hear.

At first they wanted the work done quickly, so they didn’t think that if I worked more hours I would bill them for more hours. Then they wanted to be billed for fewer hours, so they didn’t consider than I would work fewer hours on the project and things would get done much more slowly.

They were covered because it was all documented.

Unfortunately for the client, who would like to pretend that we were springing this on them at the last minute, we had tons of emails to show we had told them well in advance.

My manager’s email back in October had even included an estimate of when the project would be completed based on number of hours worked per week. We were well and truly covered.

The client was NOT happy.

Now, as for the fallback.

The client kicked and screamed and demanded that I go back to work on their project full time, or even that my company should provide a second person to help me meet the deadline at the end of the year.

It’s January and the project is still unfinished, so you can guess how well that went. Client had to move the big presentation of the new software and was not happy about it (and about having to explain it all to their own CEO) but we told them very nicely in corporate tones to pound sand.

How annoying!

I was already scheduled to work on two other projects for the next few months, and it had been hard enough to put me full time on this project the first time. My manager is not going to leave another two clients hanging, especially not to please this Client who keeps changing their mind and threatens to cancel their contract every other week.

As a company we do our best to keep the client happy but there is a limit to everything, especially when someone goes out of their way to not listen when we try to explain how cause and effect works.”

And now it’s time to see what people had to say.

This reader has a GREAT manager.

Another Reddit user talked about a big job screw-up.

This reader said they want to believe, but…

One Reddit user said people like this never learn their lesson.

They just don’t know what the heck they want!

That sounds pretty frustrating.

If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.