Alright, so let me tell you about this “jamie mar.” situation. It wasn’t some fancy project, believe me. It all started pretty casually, almost a bit too casually for my liking, if I’m honest.
I got roped in because, well, someone had to do it, and everyone else was conveniently “busy.” So, it landed right on my desk – a pile of vague requests and half-thought-out ideas from this one guy, let’s just call him Jamie M. This all went down around March, which is how we ended up calling the whole mess “jamie mar.” internally. Just stuck, you know?
The initial brief, if you could even call it that, was a complete joke. Seriously. It was more like a wishlist scribbled on a napkin than actual, workable requirements. Stuff like “make it pop” and “it needs that wow factor.” You know the drill. So, the very first thing I had to do was try and pin down something, anything, concrete. I spent days, I’m telling you, days, just on phone calls and emails, trying to get straight answers. We even had a couple of super awkward video calls where he’d mostly just stare off into space.
Then the actual “work” began. What a circus that was.
- First, I had to basically become a mind reader to figure out what he really wanted. That was like pulling teeth, without anesthetic.
- Then, I put together some really basic sketches and ideas. I deliberately kept it simple because I had a feeling anything too complex would either totally confuse him or he’d just demand a million changes anyway.
- The feedback I got? Mostly contradictory. One day it was “this is too plain,” the next it was “whoa, too much going on.” It was exhausting.
- I vividly remember wasting an entire weekend redoing one tiny little part because he’d seen something “kinda similar” on some random website he stumbled upon. And of course, he decided he absolutely had to have it, with zero thought for how it fit with everything else, or, you know, basic logic.
But I plowed through it. Fueled by a lot of coffee and a fair bit of muttering under my breath, I can tell you that. I had to break down everything I said and did into tiny, super-simple pieces for him to even grasp. It felt less like I was doing any real creative work and more like I was managing a toddler, to be perfectly frank. My main aim pretty quickly changed from “let’s make something great” to “let’s just get this darn thing finished.”
In the end, we managed to deliver something. Was it the best thing I’ve ever made? Heck no, not by a long shot. Was Jamie M. happy with it? Well, he signed off on it, and at that point, that’s all I really cared about. He probably forgot all about it by the next morning. For me, though, “jamie mar.” became one of those stories you tell. You know, a classic example of how not to run a project, or how not to be as a client.
It wasn’t pretty. It definitely wasn’t something I’d stick in my portfolio. But I got through it. And sometimes, that’s all you can really do, right? You just grit your teeth, do the job, and then you move on to whatever’s next, hoping it’s a bit less of a “jamie mar.” kind of deal.
