I’d rather have too much information from my staff than too little, but that’s just me. And yes, excuse and explanation have become conflated, that’s true, Scribbler.

The list of 11 things contains some things I think we’ve all fallen into a couple of times, whether through laziness, exhaustion, or inexperience. It’s doing it chronically, like The Cockroach did, that’ll get your ass handed to you on a plate.

It’s usually best not to give clients too much personal info, even if you are on your deathbed. Just let them know you either can or cannot do the job.

I had a really awesome excuse once, but I was afraid my client would never believe it: some crazy guy claimed he had put a bomb in the trunk of his car. The street was blocked off, and I could not make Fedex that day. I was so sure my client would not believe it, I sent him the newspaper! That was back in 1994. I bet if I hadn’t sent that paper, it would have gone down in that editor’s history as the Worst Freelancer Fib Ever.

I used to have the bad habit of letting my clients know WAY too much about me. I’d rattle on about having a headache, if traffic was bad, if someone died. I’m sure they thought I was an annoying sad sack with nothing but gloom despair and agony on me.

No one wants a freelancer who always seems to have a dark star shining down on them.

I once mentioned to a client that I had a migraine. I could hear the hesitation in his voice when he asked “Do you get those a lot?” The gears must have been running in his head: “Is this freelancer sickly, does she spend a lot of time on the fainting couch?”

The “excuses” thing is funny though – we have multiple ways of looking at things. To “excuse” actually means that there is reason to accept a delay or absence, and yet we use it a lot for “made up reasons to cover our real, inappropriate reason for being gone”.

I was once in a conversation with a friend and she asked why I hadn’t done something that week (it related only to me, and didn’t really affect others fortunately): I said I had flaked and hadn’t done one crucial thing. She looked at me and said, “That’s no excuse!” I looked at her and blinked – I wasn’t trying to excuse myself, I had just told her what happened.

It’s the “Yeah, yeah, I’ll get to it” non-responses that really bother me.

Hm, I’m sure I haven’t been Ms Perfect Freelancer every day of my life, but I have been on the receiving end of some of this in a big way, especially from the super-busy martyr guy (we used to call him The Cockroach because he was always scuttling around), and worse yet, the domino person in the chain who pushes everything back for everyone else in the line.

I used to over-book way too often, mostly because money was so tight and I always had to take on extra work. If a job got pushed back because someone didn’t deliver, there were many times I had to quit a gig, or pull all-nighters, making me the weak link. Just miserable.

I tend to underbook now, which is dangerous in a different way! Sometimes my schedule is too slim, and that can hurt income when a job gets pushed back by the client.

I hardly ever pull all-nighters anymore, though, which is great, though for whatever reason, I’ve started working late nights again and getting up late. I just get more done that way.

Anyhoo, great post. Thanks so much!