No. Your largest gripe lately has been bugs. Frivilously changing code without taking the time to go through testing. This one tweak is of relatively little significance compared to the unavoidable chance of introducing a bug.
No. You've re-discovering the changes that you yourself have requested and reporting them as bugs, sometimes credabily. You need to start thinking out requests better. We're not arranging furniture here. These changes are time consuming, both to execute, and in the email to and fro they generate.
No. It would take me ten times as long to automate the task at hand as it would take someone in the office to do it by hand -- for ten years -- and they're cheaper. And that's assuming that you're able to get me good specs on it, which is an impossibility even among people experienced in attempting to do so, and it also ignores the extremely likely case of the automation breaking at some point. Your office temp has a longer MTBF than the harddrive in your server.
No. You're requesting more and more features, but you're not using the ones you have. The more I code, the more you get confused send requests for support because you won't take the time to read documentation, experiment, and actually make use of the code. Every feature I add automates something so you don't have to do something, but the real problem is that you're too old and too lazy to learn how to use this bit of software, and that I can't automate away.
No. These assinine requests are part of some freaky power trip, where you boss me around, then brag to your friends that you've got a great "computer guy" who "takes care of everything for you", and that if as soon as I start saying "no" to these requests, you'll go turn on me and go ballistic. Having custom code written for you doesn't make your office run more smoothy or give a better user experience for your customers, it just strokes your ego, and your requests of "a $foo just like $bar.com has except more $baz" and fixation with the admin area are a dead giveaway. The problem with trying to stroke your vanity is that it needs constant stroking, and I like goals I can actually achieve, finish, and be done with. That and your vanity doesn't have infinite money and wouldn't be willing to part with it if it did. The vain are the king of the non-payers, and that further disinterests me. Meglomania is fine until you start recruiting poor techies to try to help you realize it, and few techies even realize that that's what they're being signed up for.
No. You don't have any idea how much effort it will take, and when I try to tell you, you ignore me. I know for a fact that you would never in a million life times spend the effort, uncompensated, to build up the expertice to do the task and then go on to take the time. You want to peddle to the moon but you won't peddle to the corner store. You're only willing to spend my time if you can get the price low enough, force me to lowball on the quote, dump the rest of your little wishes on when it starts to run long and demand those for free. If you're not willing to pay for the actual effort required, you don't really want this, and nothing I do is going to make you happy. The project is doomed from the start.
No. You're only making these requests because you're bored and anxious and want to hurry things along, and you get a feeling of progress from seeing me jump in response to your requests. However -- and I've seen this a thousand times -- in the end, you're just going to be pissed at me for not completing the big mail goal you said you really wanted completed. So you need to decide once and for all what the priorities are and stick to it. Remember that I'm working for a month or two at a time for major updates with radical changes and piles of features. If you can't sit on your hands for one day and let me work, or go do something else, the project is screwed.
No. You're treating my services as unskilled labor. You're refusing advice and rejecting dire warnings. You can't keep the facts straight, and won't bother. The project will fail. I can't magically turn your shit into gold. If you can't figure out some way to turn my experience to your advantage, and then you're going to fail, the project will flop, and I don't want to be around. Also people have a bad habit of not paying unless they get what they really want, and what they really want tends not to be code written -- more often than not, what you really need is your mommy, or some kind of cowboy dude ranch exerience vacation package. Bossing me around will only marginally make you feel like a man and only for a little while, and meanwhile, I have to put up with this crap day in and day out. Leave me alone.
No. Just no. I'm turned off, burnt out, disillusioned, pissed off, and stressed out. Leave me alone. I begged for a computer for a year and got it when I was nine and then spent *all* of my summer evenings programming it because I wanted to make games, and now I can't get away from doing Windows tech support for you so you can go bumping around the 'net getting your shitty operating system loaded with viruses.
-scott
