cricket_iscute

I worked with a woman, a doctor's wife, who knew I sewed. She got pregnant and I made her a quilt for her first child. She determined that, if I could quilt, I could mend and do alterations, and started bringing me her mending. I did the first batch, expecting that to be the end of it, and she wanted more, more, more. I was spending at least 50 percent of my free time doing her mending. So I gave her a machine and told her I would show her how. She kept trying to get me to do the mending and wanted her friends to also give me theirs, all for free. I gave her the names and numbers for several local paid alterations people. She invited me to parties and then told her friends that I was their sewing expert and gave good massages. She thought I should give massages during the party and sewing services later. I didn't, and stopped attending her parties.

These actions seemed to be normal in her culture, and no, I'd better not say which one that is. She took great delight in bragging how she and her husband, who could have easily afforded anything, manipulated merchants and others into selling an item for less than the merchant paid for it. When she invited me to her home for dinner, she then expected me to pay, to give her cash for the meal! She also wanted massages and many other services. At work, she expected me to cover for her when she took naps. Then she got pregnant again and wanted another quilt. She launched a massive manipulation campaign, involving herself and others, to get me to make it. This did not sit well with me. Never was there any offer of payment or even providing fabric, although she insisted on colors she wanted and wanted to pre-approve them. She insisted on coming to my home for lunch one day and brought her mending, after I told her not to, saying "This won't take you long." That was the end of that "friendship". She was a user whose greatest joy lay in manipulating others, and the harder they resisted, the better she liked it.

Now, if I am asked to do mending or sewing for someone and I don't want to, I just say that I have learned the hard way that it is not a good idea. I offer no further explanation.