It's that girl again

So, having given up on ever hearing again from that dratted publishing flunkie for whom I'd done several hours of work 10 days ago......

Out of the blue, she calls me on Monday evening. Yes, that's Monday evening. I am in a bar, about to go and have dinner with my buddy, The Chairman. This is not a good time. But what have we come to expect from her?

We have a long discussion. I tell her pretty much what I think of her - but in restrained terms, without being rude.

She wants me to meet with her author, some eccentric prof from Tsinghua. He really liked my work, wants to discuss his project with me, might have some more work to throw my way. I really don't want to work with this woman ever again. I don't want any more work from this guy, if it's the computer-generated garbage I had to wade through last time. I am merely manouevring to try to make sure I get paid for the work I've already done.

OK, when could we meet? "Tomorrow!" I'm not really free on Tuesday, but it seems she and the prof are jetting off to a conference in Indonesia on Wednesday and really need to discuss the editing with me before that. So, why are they only getting in touch with me 36 hours in advance of their departure?? On a Monday evening?? How many times have I bewailed the absurd last-minutism of the Chinese??

Reluctantly, I agree. But I point out that I want to be paid in cash at the outset of the meeting, before I discuss anything. And I also emphasise that this is highly inconvenient for me, and that I can spare them no more than one hour. Fine. All sorted.

We've had a long discussion, and we've got everything clear. Right?

No. An hour later, she sends me a text message. She needs me to edit the second half of the manuscript. By tomorrow. (A text message! Why can't she bloody well phone? This is major!!) I have already explained that I am out to dinner for the rest of the evening, and will be busy with something else all day on Tuesday. I reply by text message, remind her of this...... telling her that she is a crazy woman, and that what she asks is completely fucking impossible.

She doesn't reply. Worrying that I may have blown my chances of collecting the promised fee for the first half of the manuscript, I relent slightly - and suggest that I will skim the second half as best I can, if she will promise me an additional fee for doing so. To work through it thoroughly would, I guess, take a good 5 or 6 hours; but I can get up early the next day and do a superficial run-through in an hour or two, for an extra 500 kuai. She agrees.

At last, I can get back to enjoying my evening out with my friend.

Well, no, not quite. A little while later, I get yet another text message from her. (I'm in quite a bit of a fume with her again by now; not least because I have earlier asked her to text me her e-mail address, so that I have a more reliable method of keeping in touch with her...... and can attempt to verify that she does indeed work for the publishing house she claims to. 2 hours on, she has still omitted to do this.) This time she is fretting about the rendezvous I have specified: do I know the name of the coffee shop? No, I don't - and how the fuck would that help, anyway? I have given very clear and precise directions to it, practically the goddamn GPS co-ordinates. It is the only coffee shop anywhere nearby. It is really well-known, really conspicuous, really easy to find. Shut up and leave me alone, you wretched girl.

Tuesday dawns a miserable day. Having to get up at 6am to have another go at this manuscript-from-hell doesn't help my mood. As it happens, I get it finished quite quickly, and can move on to my other work.

At 10.40 - 20 minutes before my rendezvous, and rather before I need to leave my apartment - the dratted girl starts pestering me by SMS again about the name and location of the coffee shop. I reiterate what I told her the night before.

As I set out, it starts to rain heavily.

Now she phones me. She couldn't find the coffee shop. She doesn't believe that it exists. She has gone to another one, about half a mile further away. Would I like to go there? NO, I FUCKING WOULDN'T! I can't afford to take time out of my day for you like this. I am not prepared to walk twice as far, in the rain, and try to find you in some place I've never heard of.

The Chinese in general are pretty hopeless about giving or receiving directions to places, but this girl is just taking it to a whole other level: she is being so staggeringly dim and irritating that she completely exceeds my ordinarily saintly patience. "Come to the meeting place we agreed, or let's forget about the whole thing."

She got her prof to call me back. He was very nearly as bad as her. Could I come and find them and guide them to the rendezvous? No. I am now sitting in my favourite coffee shop, with a frozen mango smoothie, looking out at the rain. I am not going anywhere. This place is on the square between the Drum and Bell Towers, one of the most famous and most conspicuous historic sites in the city. If you can't find that, you must be completely fucking braindead.

I hand my phone over to the counter girl in the shop so that she can explain where we are in Chinese. This was possibly a mistake. She gets very flustered. It takes her 5 minutes. He's really not getting this Drum Tower concept. He is completely fucking braindead.

Anyway.... they were, it seems, all of about 5 minutes' walk away, but it somehow took them a further 15 minutes to find their way to me - making them twenty minutes late.

Imagine my FUME. Amazingly, I didn't throttle them both then and there - although those images danced enticingly through my mind. I was, I confess, pretty damned arsey with them. I don't think I have ever met two people so spectacularly dense and incompetent. And I really don't want to work with them ever again. But they have offered me rather a lot of money to do one last job........