A Secret: Managing the "Exacting" Client

Many years ago, I worked on a construction crew on Cape Cod. The builder, Bill, was an old guy with tons of experience and a great reputation. He built high-end custom homes for people with money. And one day, I learned a lesson from him that has served me well when I became a developer of high-end custom software applications.

We had been working on one particular house, an enormous ocean-front home for a wealthy client. Now, if you're a wealthy businessman, you don't just hire some local architect; you hire an exclusive architect who knows how to design a house that will make women adore you and men fear you. Such a house needs to elicit the response, "If I had your money, I'd throw mine away."

And so it did. The architect for the house was a famous architect who lived in Connecticut and who flew in on a helicopter at various points in the job's progress. "The rich are not like you and me," F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously remarked. (To which Ernest Hemingway replied: "Yes, they have more money.") Nor are their architects. You might expect that, in choosing paint colors, an architect might use sample chips from a paint company. A company like Sherwin Williams has just over one zillion colors to choose from: that should suffice, no?

No. Not if you're getting paid obscene amounts of money for a custom design job. No, you must custom mix your own colors. And so, one day -- fresh off the helicopter -- the architect showed up on the job with some base color paints and various pigments and began mixing. Once satisfied with a particular color, the architect applied some of his custom paint to a small block of wood, then signed the back of it (lest some unscrupulous painting contractor should simply apply his own color to a different block of wood). When he was done, he left a full set of signed, painted samples for the painting contractor to use to create perfect matches.

The painting contractor, a savvy guy, dutifully collected the blocks of wood and proceeded to the local Sherwin Williams to match the custom colors to the closest of their standard colors. He then returned to the job and painted over the architect's color blocks. Oh, those sneaky contractors! A clear case of shenanigans bordering on hoodwinkery.

The general contractor, Bill, had his own tricks. Just prior to the final inspection from the architect, Bill had a worker do three tasks that seemed exceedingly odd to inexperienced me:

1. Adjust the front door so that it would slightly stick
2. Unscrew the light in the front hall closet immediately off the front door
3. With a SkilSaw, scar one of the planks in the enormous deck overlooking the ocean.

"Uh, B