Just when you thought it couldn't get more complicated...

So this story is a dovetail to my angry rant from Friday. Buckle your seatbelts because it's kind of a long story. Back in April I got in to business with a lady from Sri Lanka who makes custom wedding gowns and bridesmaid dresses. Her name is Nelka DeSilva and she is living here in Provo while her only daughter attends BYU. Nelka didn't need the money- she just started sewing dresses for cash because she had nothing to do while she waited for her daughter to finish school all day. 

Nelka's work was great at the beginning of our business relationship. She made her appointments and seemed generally pleasant to work with until around mid June when her daughter started being stalked by some psycho who lived in their building. Nelka I guess got overly stressed out by the situation and started having a meltdown. She started missing dates and appointments and getting really sloppy with her work. I had to start giving refunds and discounts to all of her clients because she was messing up their projects. I talked to her about it, and she got really irate and stopped coming in to work at all. 

After about the 5th psychotically angry customer that I had to deal with, I finally informed Nelka that our business partnership had to end. I left her with one of our 2 sewing machines so she could finish two projects that she had already started, agreeing to let her keep all of the profit from those jobs. She called me a few weeks later saying she needed fabric for a couple of the dresses, but that was the last I heard until her clients started calling me up and cursing at me on the phone saying that Nelka had told them I kept all of their money. She apparently no-showed at one of the client's fittings and the girl came unhinged- the one I had to deal with on Friday night while Luis was winning the $700 laptop. 

Anyway, since she won't answer my phone calls or open the door when I stop by I wrote her a very long and detailed letter explaining why I can't handle her clients for her- namely because she kept all of the material and money and her failure to involve me in the production process left me with no sort of quality control on the products she was pinning my name to. I left it with her tonight and about 30 minutes later got a phone call from her very last client saying that Nelka had given her wedding dress to me- which she clearly had not. 

Apparently Nelka was so distraught at the Friday appointment she agreed to give Katy's wedding dress to Courtney's mom, so that I would pay Courtney's mom for the wedding dress since she'd spent the money from Courtney's deposit and couldn't give her a full refund... essentially trying to blackmail me in to paying her upset clients. Of course Courtney's mom probably threw the dress in the nearest dumpster out of spite. 

So now I'm stuck in this totally white-trash web of lies and deceit that Nelka has been spinning for her clients about how I'm the bad guy and how they need to press charges against me for swindling their money and about how I've been forcing her to work in sweat shop conditions, etc. 

So anyway, I have to spend tomorrow morning down at the police department because Katy wants her wedding dress and now I don't even have the money from her deposit to give her back because Nelka kept it all. 

The really sicko thing about this whole stupid affair is that I'm actually glad that this is happening this way. Now I might actually be able to get some money back from Nelka for all the projects she was paid for, plus I get the added benefit of having a legit reason to take recourse against her. When I spoke to her earlier this evening explaining the gravity of the situation to her, she actually told me that if I wanted my money back I would have to send the police into her apartment to get it, because she wasn't going to return it to me otherwise. And after explaining the story to Katy (who was surprisingly cool and nochalant about the situation) I actually kind of look like the good guy for taking care of the situation with minimum involvement from her- we just have to schedule one extra fitting for her at the end of the month. 

Anyway, I'm feeling good about the whole situation, surprisingly enough, and I'm actually glad that I never have to do business with this lady or her bratty daughter again, since Courtney and Katy were the last clients Nelka took on before buying her plane tickets back to Sri Lanka. She leaves on August 29th. 

The only problem I have with this is that my life is starting to turn into a really stupid, overly dramatic soap-opera, which is the opposite of how I like my life to be. I went through a similar period of drama when I was about 19 and swore I would never let my life get this complicated again. So please, don't think that I am usually dealing with swindler's, police, and the like. It's just been the last month or so that things have gotten crazy.