Oh, I had one too!!
Your's about the 10k'ths of an inch made me think of it.
They come by a while back looking for a used computer as they are starting a new business. They see we do shirts and embroidery and get excited and so do I... I love new clients and these guys seem loyal as they are understanding the struggles of being a small business owner. I mention biz cards and he's like "oh man, that would be great... I've been fighting with ours in MS Paint.
I beg him to download Inkscape or at least Gimp to do it in.
Well, they finally get back to us a couple of months later and want to do these biz cards ($60/1000 plus art fees)... well they want to stay as close as possible to the $60... They show me the "art work" and it's TERRIBLE, It's an EXTREMELY basic cross with some text. So I'm like, look we can recreate that for you and we will only charge you $75 for everything... $15 bucks art charges. Trying to help them out.
Well, he starts telling me how he's measured everything on his screen with a ruler and it needs to be this, this and this.
I'm like, just send us what you have and we will take care of it.
So we lay theirs under it and draw it on top in Illustrator and send them the proof.
We get an email back on the weekend saying "I know it's the weekend but can you please call us at your earliest convenience... blah blha blah... we are not satisfied... blah blah blah... lengthy email"
My wife gets a copy of this email and is like "why did you let me read that?" She's ******. So we decided we needed to "fire" them.
I send them an friendly email bowing out and that we just don't think we are the right shop for them. Think about what kind of a pain in the *** that would be for embroidery and screen printing stuff later!! "it's crooked", it's got a little loop of thread here. HELL NO!
I gave him a few examples related to his field to show how nit picky he was being without being a douche.
Surprisingly he came in and shook my hand and thanked me for being honest and they understand that they didn't have the budget to get EXACTLY what they wanted at this time. Even brought back one of my Outdoor Cap catalogs I had given him, I told him he didn't need to do that.
Only bad thing is they wanted to work together in the future when they do. *face palm*
All and all, good results but holy crap that was insane. And they literally wanted EXACTLY like their publisher design (they upgraded). My wife had put a nice subtle drop shadow on the cross to give it a bit of depth and pop and they didn't want it.
I mean, it was probably one of the worse design jobs I had ever seen and they were amazed by my wife's work and the things that she had done to other people's "boring" but better than their business cards before. Yet they didn't trust her with a single element of the design.
OH, and when I told him he could go two sided for the same price... they got all excited then came back with a card that was the exact same on both sides... "ever seen that before?" I answered completely honestly... I said, "nope, I sure haven't."