“Our designer/developer just quit, can you finish for him?”

No, and here’s why.

When one is resigning from a freelance project, there’s almost always something more about it.

What must happen for you to drop the job? The job that you have papers on, that quiting can damage your image? Pretty much, if you ask me. I had some rough times with customers, we all had. Sometimes I was called in the middle of the night, on a Sunday afternoon etc. I wanted to quit a lot of times, but I decided that I’m more than that.

Some people doesn’t. They quit and left the job unfinished.

When that happens, client needs someone to finish the job. And yeah, they pretty much always find someone, but — after last year’s adventure — this will never, ever be me.

It all started in June 2013, a woman called me that their developer did drop the job and she needs someone to take over. After a couple of phonecalls we agreed that I will do everything from scratch(the site wasn’t even mobile-optimised). It ran smooth and I didn’t know why the previous guy quit. I didn’t ask (maybe it was my mistake), she didn’t tell.

Everything ends.

After two weeks of working together client went berserk. And I mean berserk. Calls “after the movie” (around 23:00), crazy requests (“make it load faster” with tons of graphics) and pretty nasty language (“get it done, for fuck’s sake”, “you’re that dumb?”) started to get the better of me. I felt stressed and tired, I wanted to finish this project as fast as I could, so I stayed up late, drank a lot of coffee and was pretty much a zombie for a week or so.

Then I decided to slow down, let her wait. I told her not to call me if she wants to get loud, because it upsets me. I told her that additional requests not specified earlier won’t be cheap. I was *this* close to ask her to literally fuck off.

I slowed down a bit, took a free weekend, and finished the job. It wasn’t easy, but it tought me one thing.

If designer/developer drops from the job, he had a good reason.

I know, there may be situations that someone got sick or something like that, I know. But I decided not to take that risk again.

Only last week I turned down two requests to “finish for someone”. Both looked nice, one was the whole package (design + development), the other was only design. But I don’t feel bad because of it. I decided to take my mental health before my work and it really pays off.