This conversation took place during the design phase of a typical website project.

Client: We should use the gallery widget from [well known video service provider] on our new site! No sense in us creating something new, when they have one we can use already.

Great! Client demonstrates good understanding of embeddable widgets and the value in using them.

Me: Excellent idea, we’ve done our research and can see it’s as simple as logging into your account, and getting an embed code from your provider. We will include a sample in the design and set this up for you during development.

At this point, I supply a link to a page showing how this feature works, and what the output looks like.

Client: No no no, you’ve misunderstood completely. The provider won’t code for us and we don’t know how to code either. As discussed you have to log in and set up the gallery for us.

Me: No problem, it sounds like we’re talking about the same point. Our plan is to do exactly as you’ve suggested. We will log in and handle the setup for you. It’s all in the project plan we provided.

Client: You’re still not getting it! We won’t be doing this ourselves. You have to do this on our behalf.

Me: …

This exchange continued for quite some time. The client was adamant that we didn’t understand and got more irate. Eventually, they begrudgingly accepted we were talking about the same thing all along.