Working with people who are just chaotic and don't respect other people's time...

I've got this client I've worked with for a long time...and every time I do a project with her I swear it's going to be my last.

She's a nice lady but she's so goddamn hard to work with. Scatterbrained. Every project is a jumbled mess. Even simple things like scheduling a meeting is agonizing with her.

Like today she wanted to jump on a call and I agreed...

...sends me a Google calendar invite for 10:30am, Zoom link to follow.

Zoom link arrives. Zoom says meeting is for 11:00am.

Which is it?! 10:30 or 11:00?

So I jump on the 10:30 just in case and it says "Host has not yet arrived" and I just wait a while.

Meanwhile, client emails me: "Are you going to get on this call?"

I am on the call. You have to let me into the call.

Silence...

I text her. "Hey, I've been on the call, just waiting for you to let me in."

Nothing...

So basically I just WAIT until she finally joins the call at 10:52, randomly. Proceeds to say:

"I don't have a lot of time to talk about this project so here it is." Then proceeds to talk about a project that's totally different from her email plus this project isn't even really ready to move forward so I'm left even more confused and I say:

Me: "Okay, so what do you want me to start working on?"

Client: "Nothing. Yet. We have another call tomorrow but I'd like you start thinking on this."

Me: "Thinking on what, exactly? It seems like according to the guidelines of the project there's only two viable options that have already been created so I'm not sure what you'd like me to do. Can we even pitch a third option? It sounds like it's not possible from the vendor side."

Client: "Well, I just wanted to plant this in your brain and see if you could come up with something. You know. Because the client wants to make a decision by tomorrow."

Me: "Okay, well I'm still not sure WHAT you want me to do and I'm also not sure I can even get it done by tomorrow morning."

Client: "Right. Gotcha. Yeah. Okay! I've gotta run to another meeting. Yeah, so let me know what you think..."

And so we end the call and I'm just left confused with no direction.

EVERY project is like this. EVERY one. And I would fire her has a client but she keeps bringing work to my door and she DOES pay although there's often confusion regarding that as well.

I'm mainly just venting here. Feels like I'm always working with these chaotic people who don't have their shit together AT ALL...and it's not actually my JOB to help them get their shit together. You should have your shit together by the time you call me, really. Because you're not really paying me enough to do that for you.