That would certainly include me, of course.
But I’m sure most of you know someone who regularly crosses the line. (Oops, me again!) I just have to get this off my chest — more accurately, my solar plexus — and please remember, I love the guy. It takes one to know one, after all, so how could I hate myself? (No, not that!) The following is grossly paraphrased and reconstructed mostly from emails, but accurate enough for performance art:
Me: Hey, it’s a good cause, I’ll make a website for you guys with WordPress and Thesis, gratis. It’ll rock, and you can post news, have a forum, all kinds o’ shit. Let’s go get ‘em!
He: Oboyoboyoboy I love you!
Me: It’s ready, post something. [I told him how.]
He: What about a green background with white text?
Me: Here’s a green background, but I have to keep the white text blocks. [Looking at rewriting way too much CSS. Pro bono, remember?] It’s ready, post something.
He: I want to change the photos and put my article on the home page. And get rid of the blog.
Me: The photos are changed, your article is now the home page. I deleted the blog, too, but now you can’t post anything.
He: I know people here better than you. Hispanics [sic] and the Anglos we’re working with don’t DO blogs. How can I add things to the home page and put up others?
Me: You can’t, not without lessons. That’s what the blog was for, so you could post things. [DANGER! Geez, I gotta get outa here.] Look, I need to let go of this. No hard feelings.
He: Rant rant rant rant rant. Fine, I can do it myself in iWeb.
Me: [calmly] There you go, it’ll be beautiful, and I can help. You can do your own blog with iWeb, too. Sounds fine.
He: My home page is almost ready. It looks great.
Me: Fine, go ahead and publish it. I’ll put the domains in your name, and I’m done. Just lemme know if you have any problems. But hurry up, I have an unlicensed copy of the theme running there and don’t want to piss off the developer.
He: [two days later] I’m not ready. Rant rant rant. Forget it, we can deal with a blank page. Who needs you? And I hate email, can I call you?
Me: Look, I’ve done all I can do. No, don’t call me. I need a private day – seriously! I just put up a simple HTML page with your article and deleted my software and files from the server, so you’re good to go, anyway. Just publish via iWeb and everything will be dandy.
He: RANT rant spew abuse, spew abuse RANT rant rant. I can’t do emails. PLEASE CALL ME.
Me: Geez, you take high maintenance to new heights, brother, but I love ya, man, so let’s move on. And I’ll talk to you any time at all, just not now. Please respect my privacy today. It’s a very special day here [True, for numerous reasons...]
He called me, of course, but I didn’t listen to the voicemail.
UPDATE: Oh my God, he called the hosting company and had the password changed! Outrageous paranoia, what? And still no recognition of my $500+ worth of pro bono work for the cause. Commenter Mig Zee is dead on.
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Can you say “ungrateful”? Wow.
kinda’ reminds me of when I used to do graphic design
Yep, experiences like that prove you’re a real web designer alright!
The subject is actually a friend of mine, or was. Hard to tell now.
But I’m different these days. I won’t be pulled into this psychodrama. I told him three days ago that I had to take down the Thesis installation once I started the domain name transfer, because that meant it wasn’t “my” site, and that meant I’d be in technical violation of my developer’s license unless he paid a $40 fee. All pretty small potatoes, but Thesis developer Chris Pearson is someone I respect and on whose good side I very much want to stay.
Getting tangled up in the emotional games could directly impact my professional status, such as it is, and I wasn’t going to have any of that, nor was I going to let him do a trip on my head while he was crazy. I know this routine very well, being an ancient practitioner of the evil art: the one where you interpret the other person’s necessary withdrawal from the scene as a personal attack.
Hmmmm,
Don’t do freebies, Don’t follow bleeders
Watch the parkin’ meters, Look out kid ….
Michael
Mig Zee: Oh yeah.
supposed “friends” are usually the ones who end up disappointing you with this kind of dubious behavior, and you’re usually willing to cut them slack about it because they are friends…. until they finally go off the deep end into abusive paranoia, and you just have to let them go for your own health and peace (which as you say they interpret as some kind of attack or betrayal, even though they are the source of any conflict because they are behaving like a jackass)
on the plus side: you look like Obi-Wan Kenobi in that pic!
Well, I had no intention of alienating him. But he didn’t respect my professionalism or my personal space, and I had to act. I will not bow to emotional manipulation like that any more. It has no place in my life or my own behavior.
I hate that it happened, but I’m very satisfied with how I handled it. If he shows up sane and wants to be friends, cool. But I’m not doing the website thing again!
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