# Bad Clients, Gordian Knots and Transparency

DevFeed: [Bad Clients, Gordian Knots and Transparency](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/bad-clients-gordian-knots-and-transparency-28139.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<http://fuzzyblog.io/blog/consulting/2022/03/28/bad-clients-gordian-knots-and-transparency.html>)

Author: Fuzzygroup

Published: 2022-03-28T17:01:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Scott Johnson](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/scott-johnson.md>)

Topics: [Back end](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/backend.md>), [Laravel](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/laravel.md>), [Development](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/development.md>), [like](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/like.md>), [PHP](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/php.md>), [JavaScript](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/javascript.md>)

Tags: [backend](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/backend.md>), [consulting](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/consulting.md>), [developers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/developers.md>), [javascript](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/javascript.md>), [laravel](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/laravel.md>), [php](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/php.md>), [shopify](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/shopify.md>)

## AI overview

A consultant recounts a troubled backend project involving Shopify, Laravel, PHP, and JavaScript, using the experience to discuss how developers can recognize and resolve problems with difficult clients.

## Source excerpt

I have now been doing consulting professionally since 1988 (first client was the EPA) and despite that, bad clients, are always problematic. That's longer than my adult child has been alive, longer than I've ever been married, etc. I'd like to think I'm excellent at consulting but no one, no matter how experienced, can fail to make mistakes. This is a tale of when a consulting project goes wrong and how to extricate one's self. Today I finished up a project with a bad client and I wanted to write up my solution as a help for other developers in similar situations. I'm not writing this up as a humble brag or an "I'm so smart" but rather as a way to point out that: Anyone, no matter how smart, can get caught up by bad clients Sometimes you have to do the utterly unexpected to resolve things And, sometimes, you have to double down in order to resolve things The TLDR On the Situation Here is the situation: In May of 2021, a friend contacted me for a backend project using Shopify, Laravel, PHP and JavaScript. I'm a rails and Ruby guy by choice but Laravel is so clearly Rails derived that I took it on. And I did know PHP albeit from 2006. There wasn't a ton of money with this job but I like my friend and they viewed this job as a way to secure their existing web site development arrangement with this customer. I didn't know Laravel at all but I figured that even if I didn't make much from the job at least I would learn Laravel. Shopify is the only publicly traded Ruby company I know of and I have intense admiration for them so getting any experience with Shopify I felt was positive (disclaimer - I was so impressed with Shopify that I recently became a stock holder). We were going to be a consulting company to Company B which, in turn, was a vendor of primary company A's product. Our original contact at Company B was a man called D who, during the course of all this, sold the company to a man called M. The code we were contracted to write was an ecommerce "configurator" fo