Your graphic design logo story...I have one similar. I was a student intern at an energy research center. There was a state energy clearinghouse who wanted a logo. I was an industrial design major and had a graphics background, so they offered me $200 for the project. First day I presented the guy in charge 25 thumbnail sketches of different concepts, to see where they wanted to go. Since we worked with nuclear energy several of the thumbnails depicted atoms. Well this guy went nuts. He was so rabidly anti-nuclear energy and so triggered he fired me in the spot. How dare I even think of nuclear energy!! I let him know how much time I spent coming up with all those thumbnails and billed him $200 for my time, and since he didn’t tell me up front nuclear was forbidden, he’d better pay or I’ll file in small claims court. He paid!
As John Cleese said so succinctly in “The Architect Sketch”:
“They Don’t gove a Tinker’s Cuss about the Starving Artist!”