That’s not only a great line from the movie Clerks, and the title to this article, it’s something you definitely don’t want to be.

The good thing about free enterprise is that you are free to decline a job that you perceive to be beyond the scope of your expertise, that will take more time than you have to spare, or otherwise is not cost-effective for you to undertake. And also simply because you have a gut feeling that the customer is going to be more trouble than he’s worth. So how do you get on this short list? Easy. Just do any one or more of the following, which I see quite often at a lot of the ‘lance sites:

1 Ask for Spec Work This is our number one annoyance and guaranteed to send me right into orbit. We have a position statement on the reasons we believe spec work is bad for the web designer and for the paying customer. And we believe in and try to promote whenever possible the No Spec Initiative.

2 Devalue the Web Designer This is done in so many ways. But my favorite is the cry for help in the form of an Urgent! request for work needed right away, a ridiculously low budget, the declaration that you are entitled to unlimited revisions until you are completely satisfied, and that you won’t pay a single thin dime until the work is delivered to you, to your complete satisfaction. No, it doesn’t work that way. Beggars can’t be choosers. If your back’s up against the wall and you need our help, it really needs to be a two-way street. We aren’t out to take advantage of anyone, but rush projects, if we take them on at all, are going to cost you a premium because they upset our work routine, as we have to put other clients’ work aside to deal with your rush. You’ll get exactly the number of comps that everyone else gets, two. One, two. And thereafter, our hourly rate kicks in. So in a way, yes, you can have an unlimited number of comps, until you are completely satisfied — or broke, whichever occurs first. That’s entirely up to you.

3 Ask Us to Reverse Engineer or Clone Anything That’s tantamount to piracy and most people (the victims of the reverse engineering or clone job in particular) would take a dim view of anyone attempting to steal their intellectual property. Nuff said.

4 And while we’re on the topic of copyright, do not demand that you own the images and design that we deliver to you unless we’ve signed those rights over to you in writing. Because you absolutely DO NOT own them. You own the right to use them, and it’s called a LICENSE. For more information on that, check out what legal scholar Ivan Hoffman has to say about licensing web design.

5 Attempt to Justify Your Low Budget By Insulting the Designer’s Intelligence This goes hand in hand with No. 2 above but it deserves its own bullet point. It doesn’t matter how you couch the terms, we can read between the lines. In a nutshell, your declaration that you won’t entertain any high bids because the job should be a piece of cake for someone who knows what they’re doing is not going to pass muster with us. Why? Because whatever it is you want us to do for you probably will be a piece of cake for us; we can probably do in our sleep. And take 1/100th of the time it would take YOU to do it. But you know what? That’s exactly why we get to charge a nice fat fee for it. We’re saving you TIME. And time, after all, is money.

Bottom line, we are in this business not only to hone our craft and to do what we enjoy, which is making beautiful, functional web pages and drop dead gorgeous graphics, but to earn a living at it. Respect our work and we will respect you. And everyone will get along just fine. Now, would someone hold my drink while I climb down off this soapbox?!

P.S. And if you want a great design that you can be proud of, then hire us! We’re not the cheapest web designers out there and we aren’t the most expensive. But one thing’s for sure: You’ll love what we can do for you!