On and off over the years I've done simple computer work as a side job. Simple websites, small programming jobs shit like that. Well one time I got this customer, dude wanted me to build him a website for his property maintenance company. So I go meet this guy for coffee to talk about his website. Seems normal enough at first, dude in his late 40's or 50's, one of those acts like he knows computer type boomers but doesn't really understand shit. But at some point, he brings up the fact that he's a roma traveller.
He tells me about his website and it seems simple enough, your standard small company for hire kind of shit. A few pages about the services and shit, some pictures, slap it together in a few hours with WordPress and call it a day kind of shit. Anyway, I start to tell him my rates and how I track time and work completed and all that shit and bring out a contract for him to sign and he just pretty much goes fuck that and offers me $250 cash up front to do it. I figured fuck it, why not, I could probably make his site for about that much in time. We agree and he agrees to send me details about his business and some pictures.
That's when the greasy gypsy shit starts coming out. Turns out, he already has a website, but it's shit, not only that, but he doesn't really have much infor about his company other than that he really wanted me to focus on some fucking special moss killing shit that apparently his company was the only one in town that could offer it. So I ended up having to look up property maintenance companies and ask the dude if that's the kind of stuff he did and he was all like yeah pretty much that stuff, but make sure you mention the demosser.
In my searches I discovered there was another company with the exact same name as his that had been around for 20 years with the same url just a different TLD.. When I asked him about them he told me they didn't exist any more and that the owner of the company had given the name to him and went off on some clearly bullshit story about the guy who owned the other company. His story was obviously bullshit, Google listed the other company as active and there was no indication their company was gone.
I just decided not to give a fuck and just make the dude's shitty website. Then he emails me and about seo and starts going off about he needs good seo and how his website needs to be higher on Google than the other website. Now, I have a vague idea about seo, but I don't really know much about how to optimize shit for seo, but I do know WordPress has a bunch of seo plugins so I downloaded a few of them and found one that showed you a score before and after editing and a bunch of other metrics and values and shit.
So I took a bunch of before screenshots and I emailed the dude I told him I'd added some high powered seo software to his website that would optimize his site and increase his seo score which would put him higher on Google. I warned him it would take a few weeks but it would work. Anyway, he's stoked as fuck. He thinks i'm some kind of awesome computer wizard and he tells me to go ahead. So I change a bunch of the wording on his site until the scores go up sufficiently, this takes about an hour or less, then wait like a day or so before I email him some after pictures. Again, he's stoked as fuck, so I ask him if he's happy with everything, he says yes, so I make his site live and after a few minor edits at his request I figure i'm done with him.
A few weeks later he texts me asking about some more vague internet type work he has and mentions about paying me and a bunch of other shit but at that point my work had gotten busier and I didn't have time and I just didn't give a fuck so I just ignored him.
Dude definitely seemed like the kind of guy who would come to your place for a job, take a deposit, then fuck off forever with your money.
Just when I thought I was done with him though, a long time later I get a text randomly from him again. It was about his website. I respond to him, but turns out his phone I guess had sent a message from a long time before, either way, I asked him how his business was doing. He didn't have it any more, he was a crypto man now doing well with crypto currency, on his way to becoming set for life and asked me if I knew about crypto and wanted to take part with him. This was right at the time right before that last big bubble burst right when all the normies were going crazy for crypto.
Haven't heard from him since but i'm guessing things didn't go as planned for him.