About 30% of my gigs were for Computer Gods, who I was not worthy to lick their toilets clean. Life happens and the most common reason they called on me was burnout (too much work=bite more than you can chew etc...). Another reason was personal/family not work related.

I had 2 rules for Computes Gods:
1. If I agreed to take over the work, I get paid 110% of what they were making per hour. So if they got paid 200/hr, I would ask for 220/hr. My friends would tease me that the Gods would loose 500-1000/hr in "unrealized gains".
2. I would only do 2 lifetime calls for such a person. 2 was a good number because they learnt to be careful and I could say that my work was not shit.

Of course for people that I knew and considered friends the rules did not apply... and sometimes they took advantage and I got shafted.

The point of the story is to learn to be gracious. Regardless of the outcome the only thing I heard is "Congratulations and thank you!".