Today I walked away from a web programming job I’d taken on a few weeks ago. It was for a family owned business, who had been referred to me by another customer.
Initial contact was made by the wife, who sent me a copy of their brochure with the products they wanted to sell. Shopping cart site I thought – lots of products, streamlined shopping process – Zen Cart customisation, easy.
We had a meeting, which I didn’t think went terribly well. I didn’t hit it off with the husband. He has a blunt manner which immediately put me on the defensive, he’d seen at least one other site I worked on and told me he didn’t like it. Nearly every time we spoke after that I would get off the phone fuming, kicking myself for letting it get under my skin.
Last week, after putting together a basic framework on how I thought the site would work, things came to a head. The man picked it to pieces and explained how he wanted it done. To me, the way he wanted it didn’t make a lot of sense, I thought it would be very confusing for customers. We discussed it till we were blue in the face, then I put H on the phone to try and provide a point of view from a customer perspective. The man has never shopped online, which may explain why he couldn’t understand what I was doing, but was adamant about the way he wanted to do it.
Finally I agreed to another meeting, as the man felt he wasn’t getting through to me over the phone. I tried to keep an open mind and see things from his point of view, but the crux of the matter is we couldn’t agree in principle on how to do the site. I foresaw many hours of work for something that I didn’t think would be successful.
I was honest with him, I told him it was turning into something I didn’t want to take on. So we agreed to end it, he is going to find another programmer and I wished him good luck. It may well be that he will end up getting what he wants, and it is successful. It will come down to selecting the right person for the job most likely.
Perhaps I SHOULD have done what he wanted, instead of being so fixed in my ideas. But on the other hand, there has been a little voice inside all along, telling me that this job would be full of problems. The rapport was not there and this made for poor communication and lack of trust. I think ultimately I have made the right decision and this client will be happier with another programmer.