The client is sometimes right

I apologise for the long hiatus in posting. The whole holiday season/January getting-back-up-to-speed period has taken a heavy toll on my side projects. I will be posting on a weekly basis now, but from time to time, the smelly stuff will hit the fan and I may miss a post or two, so I also apologise in advance for that, too.

I've talked about clients before. How an abrasive and insensitive client can be the bane of our existence for a few hours, or even a few weeks. Well, now I would like to flip to the other side of the coin.

Picture this: you are someone who walks into a very complex recording or mixing session, and you have the most basic technical knowledge. Your job is to make sure everything runs smoothly, but you don't necessarily know how the guy or gal behind the board makes his 'magic' happen. You are trusting one person who has a very different skillset than yours with thousands of your company's dollars to deliver a quality product within a specific budget, on time. If you haven't worked with this person before, you would be absolutely right to feel a bit nervous. After all, if things goes wrong, who gets the blame? Sure, if the engineer screws up, you can take it up with the studio manager, but in the end, you are there to supervise the job – and that's your job. If the whole thing is a fiasco, you get in trouble.

I was recently in a similar position, of having to sit at the producer's desk and supervise a session – so I was the client, this time. The one difference is that I knew what the engineer was doing, and how to do it. On this particular session, I was very lucky to work with a fantastic engineer – a professional, knowledgeable and good-natured individual. But I can certainly see how the session would have been less than positive if the engineer had "marked their territory" and assumed a defensive stance. Granted, my attitude could have been one of seeking absolute control and imposing my own methods, but I felt it was good to simply trust the engineer to do the best work possible. If I had been a pain, I'm sure this particular person would have been just as professional, but at the huge expense of their emotional well-being.

It really is a very symbiotic relationship, the one between client and engineer, but I also compare it to having a guest in my house. Being the host, I'm expected to be gracious and welcoming. The guest is expected to be respectful of my home and my family. But if I'm an ass and then they are rude in return, I'm the only one to blame, mostly because we are in my home. Not that there is any justification for unprovoked rudeness, but that is the aggravating factor here: there is a natural level of even the slightest uneasiness in the client, not being in their own company/office environment (no matter how many sessions they have supervised). It is up to the engineer to make the first move and try to establish a positive vibe from the moment the client sets foot in the room. If the client doesn't want any of it, that's all you can do.

There are many people out there who are positive and good-willed. If you try and assume any new client is one of them before they step into your room, you have a much better chance of having a good session and a happy client at the end.