Putting out fires and cleaning up other people’s messes is part of the competent freelancer’s lot. The best fictional encapsulation of it that I’ve ever seen is the Winston Wolf sequence in “Pulp Fiction”, right down to Jules’ look of utter relief when he finds out The Wolf is coming to help and his moment of sheer panic when Vincent is enough of an arsehole that Wolf politely threatens to leave them to sort out the mess themselves. I’ve seen both of those expressions on clients’ faces, and I’ll wager you have, too.
