Worst Comments 2

#761

Clients…

A prospective client once approached me because they had seen stuff I had done for another client, using a 3D model I had built as a personal project. Observe that I never sold the 3D model to anyone, or ever charged anyone anything for having modelled and UVW unwrapped and textured it. I only ever sold renders. Anyway, this client approached me and asked what it would cost to have the model painted in a paintjob of their liking, and rendered against a background of their liking. I gave them a quote.

They didn’t answer for a week, and then they came back and said that they had found another 3D artist who could do it cheaper. So could I please hand my 3D model over to him. I said no, the model isn’t for sale, it is a personal project.

They said “No, you don’t understand, we don’t want to buy it. We only want a copy of it, for free. We’re not going to buy anything from you anyway, so it isn’t as if you’d lose money by giving it away for free. Just a copy, you’d still be allowed to keep the original files.”

Oh Lord, give me strength.

#762

Hahahahah…that was a good one…u can’t imagine how many times i 've heard that one too…lol…:scream:

#763

Was that the actual wording? Oh dear, oh dear…

#764

i got this e-mail from the newly hired creative director (AND NOT A CLIENT) here in the company that i work with a 300x200 pixel image attached to it.He followed his mail ofcourse to my desk for some over the shoulder “guidance”.
So,he says: “i sent you an email”
ME: " yeah i saw it"
HIM: “throw this image in that 3d max program and export a full screen version of it”
ME: “um…you know …3d software doesn’t do that…blah blah blah …PAL screen resolutions…pixels…blah blah blah…”
so,i open the file in photoshop just to zoom in twice to show him what i mean about the blown up pixels.(zoom tool…click,click) and i have the 300 pixel image covering my screen.

HIM:“See? that wasn’t that much of trouble wasn’t it?why do you have to be so dramatic?
now…apply some CAUCASIAN blur to get rid of all this noice and send it back to me”

:argh::cry: (where is the jumping-out-of-the-window smiley when you need it???)

#765

You could have said something along the lines of "That’s racist and, frankly, if you ask me to do something like that again I will have no choice but to report the incident to upper managament and the appropriate government department that deals with anti-discrimination . . . then watch his reaction :wink:

#766

hahaha…i should but he was on the right track at least…after all caucasian blur isn’t very far from gaussian blur.

Oh…and this other time he was happening to pass by me while i was doing some exhibition stand.So, obviously feeling like he HAD to make a comment (after all ,it is his job right?) he says" whoa whoa whoa…stop…your perpective is completely wrong" while looking in max’s viewports.So I’m like " how the hell can a 3d software mess up the perspective???"
And he walks up to me, reaches to my monitor holding a bic pen as an artist’s pin horizontaly and vertically moving it left and right and gives me his line…“See? it is wrong…just as i told you…”

#767

I would have told him in exact words: “Reis til helvete” :slight_smile:

#768

if there was a book of this thread I’d buy it, its both incredibly funny and very informative :smiley:

#769

Here Here

somebody make a book :slight_smile:

id be delighted if i got that book for xmas :slight_smile:

#770

I love this thread, and I love how it sleeps for weeks, then comes alive in a flurry of posts for a day or so. I’ve read this whole thread, and the first one. I haven’t had any experiences like these yet because I don’t work in the industry…but one day I will.

I think every industry has its own stupid client tagline. I’ve found a few.

CG - “I’ll know what I want when I see it” (obviously you know that one)

Electroplating - “Can’t you just dip it?” (Dad is an electroplater, its a complicated process, but most people assume you have a tank of molten chrome thats like chocolate and u can just dip anything in and it comes out shiny)

Violinmakers - “I found a stradivarius in my garage, is it worth millions?” (there are HEAPS of violins labelled stradivarius that aren’t genuine)

I think I’m going to make it my lifelong goal to find as many of these as I can…maybe

#771

I read that and accidentally crushed the can of red bull in my hand.

#772

I’ll preface this by saying I’m not bitter & I’m actually glad it happened.

 ----------

 At my last job, I was a “creative” 3D production artist (rendering cars mostly).  During the last 3-4 months there, work slowed a lot, and most people do nothing between projects.  Not me, after a week of exploring maxscript, I was pushing out tools like crazy, automating those tedious tasks you had to do on every project, simplifying  the UI, new features, menus for my tools, and even getting into some stuff that required advanced math . . . saving the company 50 to 150 hours per week (for FREE).  My coworkers loved the tools, and my supervisors were ecstatic!  One of my supervisors really got into it, requesting various tools, and I was even 60% through something that could automatically do projects (of a certain type).

  I get called to a surprise meeting with one of my supervisors, HR, and some accountant.  I started work underpaid, made tons of 3D advancements, volunteered for difficult projects no one wanted, then my (FREE) max-scripting, supervisors love me, and it's 3 months past my scheduled “employee review.”  So, naturally I'm thinking it's time to discuss a raise & they're trying to pull a fast one with the surprise meeting, but I was more than ready.  I walk in there, greet everyone with a smile, sit down and . . .  

  “We're sorry, but we're going to have to let you go.”  “Work has been a lot slower than usual lately and we're having to make some cuts.”

  You'd think the worst irony is they randomly laid off the underpaid guy who works his ass of between projects, but I later find out it's because “I wasn't logging many hours on creative projects, and there wasn't a 'budget' for research and development, and research and development is expendable.”  Translated: I was laid off because I work too fast & was actually productive between projects.  Oh well, I guess accounting is too complex for a mathematician (me) to understand.
#773

Give me your wife! You dont understand,… I dont want to marry her,… just borrow her for the weekend:twisted:.

Incredible!

#774

Ouch. After reading that post and feeling my heart drop into my stomach I had to reply.

You are a bigger man than I for not being bitter about such weak and infantile reasoning. It is employees like you that do things for the teams’ good and that never seems to be recognized by some of the number crunchers (not all of them are complete idiots after all).

You display fortitute of character for not going postal on them in that meeting.

I salute thee.

#775

PhantomDesign - a little ironic how you automated your own work, thus making you obsolete… :slight_smile: but that really sucks how the guys in upper positions haven’t a clue about what’s going on, couldn’t your coworkers and supervisors have influenced on getting you your job back? (Sorry for my ignorance, but I’ve never worked for a large company)

These are from a few months back…
At work we had a project for visualization of some shopping mall, and my boss was working on rendering exterior shots. The building had some interesting colored lights shot at the facade, which made for nice night renders, but daylight shots were a little bland, because no light could be seen in the sun.
So the client comments on them “In daylight shots the buildings look like uninteresting grey boxes.”
My boss’s reply “That’s because YOU DESIGNED THEM LIKE THAT.”
He ended up texturing the buildings to look like in the night renders… :slight_smile:

And another good one, one of the cliches…
After we have sent the client some test renders (at almost finished stage), they asked for us to add some other elements, which they have never mentioned before, but were surprised that we haven’t added them already. OK, boss says “Send us the plans, we’ll add them.”
They say “No, we don’t have those finished yet, you just add something, it will be good, we will send you the plans when they are finished.”
Oh, so we will have to change everything and do double work? No, thanks…

There’s plenty more, it’s a neverending story… :slight_smile:

#776

mali22
My coworkers were surprised and my supervisors were furious; my supervisors never got a chance to defend me or recommend people that should be cut instead. The company is actually medium sized (100 employees?), but yes it’s all very ironic, even the timing, I just completed 3 tools the previous day, only failing to give them a “go” button and add them to the menu. Ha ha.

  [b]Watermage:[/b]

Much appreciated! :slight_smile:

I must say though that I was beyond furious, I’m sure I wasn’t a pretty sight as my skin transformed into a deep red, tense muscles flexing, veins bulging, hatefully staring through their eyes, heat you could feel across the table, heavy breathing that makes Darth Vader sound like a pansy, and only speaking deeply and slowly as you might expect a person using every ounce of self-control to not launch across the table like an insane tiger with an adrenaline overdose.

. . . . I digress, giving them the middle finger would be far too generous considering the contributions my middle fingers made.  An hour later I was on the phone with an agency I knew, who passed my info on to two companies, and less than a week later both scheduled interviews, both interviews went great, I expect to make $10k to $15k more . . . not to mention I still have a whole list of places to apply to.  Not much of a reason to be bitter when life is looking up!  I'd even accept a position at my old company with a smile right now!  Yes, that's right after a $25k minimum raise, double vacation I never got, 1 year guaranteed employment, and some contract changes

I actually think all of this is quite hilarious now.
#777

Phantom: being a former “Detroit-er”, I think I know which place it was, and find is funny as hell they let you go.

In the meantime, the local Alias office might still be looking for people.

#778

Since some of you seem to have liked this one:

“…We only want a copy of it, for free. We’re not going to buy anything from you anyway, so it isn’t as if you’d lose money by giving it away for free. Just a copy, you’d still be allowed to keep the original files.”

I thought I’d tell you more about that one.

It actually got worse. It was an hour-long conversation I tried to shorten here, but it got uglier. When they realized I wasn’t going to give my preccciousss 3D model away for free, to a competititor, they went hostile. Basically, their argument was this:

“But you already sold the 3D model to that previous client, where we saw it. And since we are a daughter company of that company, we are basically the same client. So it actually is OUR model now! And we’ll make sure you never work again, if you don’t hand over our property to us!”

Well, they wrapped it up much nicer than that, and took an hour doing it, but that was the basic message. They put it more in terms of “you must understand that our mother company is going to have difficulties hiring you again if they don’t feel they can trust you”, and so on, but it means “You’ll never work again if you don’t do as we say”.

This was the reason I pointed out in my earlier post that I actually had NOT sold my 3D model to anyone, only renders. So the basic assumption that I had sold it was wrong. And I certainly hadn’t sold it to them.

The fascinating thing is that they obviously understood that the 3D model was valuable, since they put that effort into trying to get it, but for some reason they did not want to reward me for having done it, by buying their renders from me. Strange.

#779

OK. I work in publishing, and I’m wondering why the first thing that gets settled before a project gets started is the book bind date.

Client: Can you do this 2-level series by the “umpteenth”?

Us: Well, it will be very tight, but we will make it work. When can we get templates and manuscript?

Client: Oh, it hasn’t been written yet, and they’re only in first round of design.

Us: Riiiiight…

#780

This isn’t a comment, but it is a testimony as to how naive/desperate for work we can be fresh out of school.

I had just finished an 8 month web design class when I was contacted by a guy working as an advisor to small business. He was looking for a web designer who he could refer his clients to “with no finders fee”, and he wanted that web designer to be me. Jackpot… WRONG!!! His first job was to pay me $200/week to tutor his daughter who was behind in her web design class. After she was up to speed, we were to take on projects together, or split them between us. It took me verry little time, however, to realize that the reason she was struggeling in her class was because she had absolutly no creative or technical abilities, nor the interest to learn them. Arg. This went on for about a month, the whole time I was pressing him for the names of some clients so that I could start sending proposals, and maybe landing a job or two, but it was becoming more and more obvious that he was just looking for someone to take advantage of. Finally after a month of procrastinating he writes me an email containing the name of a single client. He goes on to tell me that he is going to be generous this time and not charge me for this one, but that from then on there will be a finders fee (per name, not per confirmed job). I waited a day for his last cheque to show up in the mail, chashed it, then sent him a polite but strongly worded email saying this was unacceptable and contrary to our agreement that there would never be a finders fee. He never emailed me back. Haha