Client insisted on faxing hand-sketched revisions for a 3D model

Just wrapped up a project where the client refused to use email or our portal. He would print my PDFs, draw on them with a red pen, and fax the pages back. Each round took three days just for the mail and fax lag. The worst part was his sketches were so light, half the time I was guessing what the lines meant. We finally finished, and he asked for the final files to be put on a CD. I had to dig an external drive out of a box in the garage. Felt like time travel, but backwards to a worse time.

4 comments

4 Comments

hall.mary1mo ago

You said "mail and fax lag" but faxes are instant, the lag was him mailing things to you. The three day wait was for postal mail, not the fax machine. That whirring and beeping was the only fast part of the whole mess. I once had a client who would courier printed changes to my office, which was somehow even slower than mail.

betty_kelly91mo ago

Totally lol, I read this article once about how people get weirdly attached to old systems cause it feels more solid to them. Like having a paper trail they can touch makes the work seem more real, even if it takes forever. My old boss was like that with printed reports, would never trust the digital version even when it was the same info. Something about the noise and physical process tricks your brain into thinking it's more official, I guess.

the_christopher1mo ago

Did the client ever explain why he insisted on that whole paper loop... @hall.mary's courier story makes me wonder if some people just get stuck in a process. Was it about control, or did he genuinely think it was more official?

skyler_jackson2719d ago

Honestly thought it was just control until betty_kelly9's point about the physical process tricking you.