How much is your mental well-being worth? $1,000? $3,000? Would you even put a price on it?
Larionne Mariah, a web designer from Los Angeles, ended a recent project because the customer didn't respect her boundaries.
After Larionne refunded them, she tweeted the climax of their conversation, reminding others to put themselves first.
It blew up. As of this article, Larionne's tweet has 259K likes. But most importantly, it has sparked a discussion on what professional relationships should look like.
Continue scrolling to check it out!
Los Angeles-based web designer Larionne Mariah had to deal with a really difficult customer
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According to Larionne, the client was actually pretty easygoing in the beginning. "I vetted them before taking on their project and laid out my availability from the start," she told Bored Panda. "They agreed to that and I proceeded with the project."
However, that changed soon. "They sent me multiple emails in a very short time span outside of my business hours. Then they proceeded to send me multiple messages on Instagram," she recalled. "I thought something was urgent. But it wasn't."
The web designer highlighted that the snippet in the tweet is her making sure they felt like she was consistent with communication. "They agreed but insisted that because they paid me a certain amount of money, they had a right to dominate my time," Larionne said.
After she tweeted the climax of their disagreement, people began talking about what constitutes a healthy professional relationship
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Some people, while they agreed the situation was messy, thought that the web designer may have overreacted and could've handled things better. However, they might not be aware of the full picture.
"I did give this person a chance, everyone just saw the end of the story," Larionne said. "This was only a culmination of multiple reminders of my communication cadence. I understand why some people feel I was wrong but the project was really just getting started and there is a clause in my agreement that I can choose to terminate the project if I feel the partnership isn't going to work."
Larionne is glad that her experience started a conversation about boundaries and how important they are. "I didn't go into business to feel belittled by clients or dreading a project," she added.
At the end of the day, the virality of her tweet needs to "cure" just one client from hell for all of it to be worth it. And I think it already has.
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