If professionals are to be trusted advisors, isn't it sometimes in everyone's best interest to ensure the customer doesn't get to dictate to us what we should do, and/or how we should do it?

Can you imagine if the CEO of a company that just hired you INSISTED on using a tag line/slogan such as "HEY, wanna buy THIS?"? If he would not listen to reason, would you quit?

I was recently in a situation in which someone insisted on telling me how to fix their computer. Their diagnosis and methods were horribly wrong. I found a polite way to pretend to listen to him, and then fix it as I knew it needed to be fixed.

We designed a website for a bandleader in 2000. We gave him 3 looks to choose from--3 motifs for interior decorating of the site. He chose the typeface from one, the color scheme from the 2nd, and graphics from the 3rd. I tried to reason with him, and gave him my interior decorating motif, in an attempt to explain in lay terms why his request was problematic.

I told him "We're interior decorators, and came up with 3 plans for your home. You chose the carpet from one, the wallpaper from the 2nd, and the lighting design from the 3rd. They're NOT going to work together."

He insisted "I'm the customer, and you must do as I say"....(We document all such things pretty thoroughly, in the event someone tries to come back to us and claim we gave them bad advice.)

When my company first opened its door in 1990 (that was not a typo. Back then we could only afford one door), I sometimes did what I was told, because I was hungry for the work. Rather than acting as the trusted advisor, I sometimes did what I thought they'd like, and what was least expensive, rather than what was best for the longer term. I also didn't know as much as I know now.

I've learned 1990, and even more since the web incident in 2000, that I'm being entrusted with business systems technology and am NOT just a hired hand, brought in to haul the trash out on Wednesdays.

One of my mentors told me a story about the jingle business that is..reasonably close to on point here. The account exec for some company or other came into the recording session for a jingle in the late 70s or early 80s. He had his girlfriend/wife/mistress in tow, and was obviously trying to impress her with his command over all the people in the room.

A tiny bit of music jargon follows. He suggested that a particular passage in the jingle "taken up an octave" (played and/or sung higher).It was pointed out to him that some notes, if taken up an octave would be unplayable, unsingable, or would sound awkward.

The ad guy, not wanting to have his "authority" taken away from him, said as if it were Solomon's wisdom. "Okay, take it up *half* an octave".

The musicians reading this may be laughing. Were a passage in a pop-music jingle to be played half an octave higher than originally written, it would sound not unlike that weird, atonal stuff that people walk away from saying "I can't sing the tune!"; or asking "Where's the tune?". Many more critical types might walk away saying "That's garbage". NO one would say it'd make a good jingle.

In that area, the arranger, or composer or producer would be the trusted advisor, and it'd be up to him/her to tell the (m)ad man that..he'd best stick to impressing his mistress with cash or expensive gifts.

All the professionals here are trusted advisors. Do you have any funny stories about client requests for things that are truly awful? Do tell!!!