How to deal with South Asian pick mes

Hi Queens,

Looking for advice here. I am a young professional looking to level up and recently moved from the West to my South Asian homeland. I have never really lived here as I spent the better part of my young adulthood abroad, but circumstances have brought me back. I am having a hard time dealing with the toxic workplace culture that is normalized here and the crazy pickmeism I am seeing in South Asian women. It's so sad because I really want to make some HV friendships but beyond the two HV queens I already know it seems like the best I can do is strategic acquaintances.

Recently I had a really bad experience, So I'm a freelancer, I mainly write and do some copy gigs. It's been a shite economy for that. Recently a friend of a friend reached out to me about a job with another friend of hers (not our mutual) and told me it was good pay for two days of work. When I got there, it was not her friend who met me but a total random. First red flag.

I went along because the company was reputable and they told me that they could never get away without paying me (in a jokey way which felt strange) and so I continued to work for them, The proposed work was a fixed rate for 2 days and a certain threshold. At the end of the first day it was obvious it would take more time so they requested I stay on and they would pay me extra. I kept telling them that they would need to pay me for the addition days and they reassured me they would. The woman I was reporting to was not based, had a lot of pick meism and was a corporate bootlicker who sucked up to the male bosses.

I mailed them an invoice and the person who i reported to blew up at me and i heard through the grapevine that they were upset with my work and said I was too slow (which was the opposite of what she was saying to me on the job. I was actually going too fast and they needed me to slow down and stay extra days because they were not ready with the sheets I needed to work on to do my job) I was obviously pissed and realized she can't be trusted so I sent her an email explaining my invoice and she called me all pissy and went "oh so you can write an email but can't pick up the phone?" which was strange because I called her before that and she wouldn't let me get a word in edgewise before hanging up and switching off her phone. She called me an hour later saying she had no idea what happened (her phone died apparently but she didn't mention that on the call, she did mention it to her coworker who told my friend of friend)

I knew she was immature and unreasonable so on call i told her that i had a hard boundary and we could discuss this over email and she went "why do you want to sever ties with us?" and i was like honey i dont have ties with you and if holding a boundary with you is severing a tie then I'm fucking glad to do it and i hung up. I then renegotiated a rate with her and I'm yet to be paid.

if this was not annoying enough, this friend of friend also lashed out because they had to get their friend involved and they didn't need to do this for me, and blamed me for trusting her and her friend and said basically I was at fault for assuming that her friend would be present at the job and that she was doing me a fucking favor by passing the brief on. BIG LESSON LEARNED THAT THIS FRIEND OF FRIEND IS NOT MY FRIEND AND CLEARLY OUR IDEAS OF FRIENDSHIP ARE VERRRRRRYYYY DIFFERENT. I have always had some red flags from her but tolerated her because she was a friend of a good friend of mine, but now I question them both and want to leave this social circle.

I just needed to vent and let this get off my system. It sucks because I did such a good job on that project, ii had so much fun and it had been a long time since I had a gig. That entire experience was spoiled for me. No more. Living in a third world country with very poor labor laws so people often work without paperwork and will not hire you unless you give in to their unreasonable demands and allow them to treat you like you're their servant.I am seriously considering changing careers because people are killing my love of writing and I would rather my job be something mundane that I make money off so I can dedicate my time on working projects I really love.

Any advice on how to deal? I love how we are a sisterhood here and am open to any suggestions.