7 Foolproof Ideas for Keeping Clients off Your Back
Can’t be bothered to get finish some work? Chosen to lie in bed and watch Netflix all day? Decided you’d rather have “a” beer than stick to that deadline?
In this post, I’ve detailed my top 7 ways to shrug off your responsibilities. You can use them TODAY to avoid whatever deadlines and tasks you now wish you hadn’t agreed to.
Broadly, my tactics fall into 7 categories:
1) Animals. Animals are unpredictable, so this is a goldmine. Options include mundane problems (‘my dog has ANOTHER problem with its bowels, so I needed to take it to the vet again’) and more leftfield stuff (‘a pack of wombats have recently started nesting in my home, and one of them smashed up my laptop’).
2) Illness. The old classic. In my experience, the best two options are something embarrassing (‘Jesus, this chlamydia is really burning my piss pipe’), or something completely fictional (‘I’m disappointed about missing that deadline too, but I recently discovered I have Flingmans Fasciitis’).
3) Equipment. You can use relatable issues (‘my Slack is down AGAIN – sorry!’), or you can confuse clients with impressive and impenetrable jargon (‘the left oscillator on my motherboard is currently experiencing some short-thrust issues, so I’ll be unfortunately unable to get any work done this week’).
4) Brain. Say things like ‘I had a brain attack last night,’ or ‘my brain is in severe pain,’ or ‘sorry, I was briefly incarcerated in prison the last few days because I committed another crime again. MY DUMB BRAIN, amiright!?’. The brain stuff is nice for keeping things vague – your clients won’t want to pry.
5) Ignorance. Admittedly, this isn’t a great solution, but it’s better than nothing. You can either blame yourself (‘the deadline was TODAY?! Oh god I’m so sorry, I’ll get it done ASAP!!’)… or if you’re a bit of an aggressive character, you can blame the client (‘you’ve got your dates wrong again you fuckhead’).
6) Children. Like animals (point 1), children are unreliable and unpredictable. Kids are total morons, and get themselves into literally unbelievable predicaments all the time… so you can really let your creativity flow with this one (‘my child got last in a grass maze last week and I haven’t seen him since,’ ‘his head fell off at a trampoline park,’ ‘she choked on a small piece of brioche on Saturday and we’re still in the hospital’). Top tip: if you don’t have children, just pretend you have—early into a client relationship, make subtle references to your ‘little ones’ or your ‘baby’.
7) A last-resort option (and this one is nuclear because you won’t be able to work again with any clients you use it on) is just to send a quick email saying that you’re dead.
Use these excuses for yourself, and you can sail through your worklife with no dramas, no consequences, and no responsibilities. Sorted!
If this has helped you in any way, you can say thanks by leaving a little donation below. With your money (and everybody else’s), I can afford to take yet another day away from work (just like I’ve helped you to do). Thanks!
