If you’re a freelancer working on Upwork, client behavior can seem erratic and unknowable. You can’t come out and ask, “Why do you want me to rush but you were slow? Why are you so cheap but expecting good quality work? Why are you disorganized?”

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I not only work on Upwork myself, but I’ve hired dozens of people and read hundreds of proposals. I’ve been in the freelancer’s shoes but also seen what it’s like to post a job, work on a hiring team for a company, and be a client.

So now you don’t have to ask those reasonable but abrasive questions! I’ll answer them, to help give a better understanding of why Upwork clients act the way they do.

Some people are lazy, cheap, disorganized, inarticulate, and antagonistic. This explanation for client behavior can pretty much apply to any source of friction you encounter. That’s why I’m putting it here at the top.

For the rest of this list, I’m going to focus on explanations that are less obvious.

When someone posts a job, Upwork automatically generates a list of workers to invite. It’s easy to click on those names without taking into account who is actually suited for the job.

Another reason you might be invited for something that isn’t a good match is that Upwork sometimes assigns its own employees, called “Talent Specialists”, to help busy client accounts find workers.

If the client just wants extra options, or if not many people are naturally proposing on a job, a Talent Specialist may invite you. The actual client may not have even seen your profile yet, so don’t read too much into the invitation.

Because detailed job posts and precise instructions increase the likelihood of the project being completed successfully, these things are in the client’s own best interest. But many times they are vague. What can explain this?

Some people know they need a certain task completed, but don’t know what they want beyond that, or any of the technical details involved. They are the equivalent of somebody who knows it’s time for a haircut, but when the barber asks “What are you looking for?” have nothing meaningful to say.

Another reason for vague posts and instructions is that Upwork client accounts can be divided into “sub-admin” accounts, which are secondary users who have been given partial access to a main account.

From the freelancer’s perspective, you just see a job post and that the client has hired 512 people in the past, and has reviews for many previous jobs. This is because all activity under the main account is pooled together, and could have been done by 20 different people with sub-admin accounts.

So, even though it might appear you are communicating with a big company, it’s possible that the person you are actually dealing with is a middle manager, who was assigned to make a job post without being given adequate instructions. This person may even be another Upwork freelancer, and not an employee of the company.

In a situation like this, your middle-manager “client” probably does not have all the necessary information about the job, and may need to ask his client (the company) for clarifications to your questions. This person may also not have authority to approve your work when it is submitted.

All this stacks together to create slow responses and vague or contradictory instructions.

Some people have unrealistic expectations out of ignorance. They think, “Hey I’m not doing this myself, but it should be easy. I could do it in five minutes. But I’m so busy I’ll hire someone else.”

This can lead to lower pay because with little understanding of what your work actually involves, and overestimating their own ability to do your job, they figure it will only take you a few minutes. They think the very low pay is actually fair and even generous, given that they “know” your work will be quick and easy.

There are a couple of common reasons for this:

They’re waiting on someone else. As mentioned above, the person you’re talking to might be a middle manager who needs to get clarification from somebody else before being able to answer you.

They’re overwhelmed. People who hire a lot on Upwork have many chats going. This can lead to so many messages that things get lost. As a good worker, losing track of a chat seems unthinkable, but it’s much easier to do as a client.

It’s good to keep in mind that we workers know how extremely valuable reviews are, but clients may not. They just want you to fix their problem, and then as far as they’re concerned, the job is over. They don’t know that good reviews are gold to you.

Beyond that, here are some more specific reasons for not getting a review:

1. The client was unhappy with how the job has gone, but is the type of person who would rather passively disengage, than spend time on a review and then possibly have to deal with your reply to that review.

2. Reviews are just too low a priority for the client to bother.

3. The client isn’t sure how to end the contract or leave one.

Your client may not know how to use the sometimes-confusing Upwork website, or they simply forget to close out the contract. Simple as that.