Consulting Work: Love-Hate Relationship

Them: We'll have all the information that you need to start the work by September 15th. We need everything done and the 17,000+ word write-up by November 1.

They send stuff on the 17th, suggest that I should do part of the work and split the task with someone else.

Them (on the 18th): Why haven't you done the work?

Me: I was waiting for the information. Plus, I thought I was going to split the work with [other person], and needed to know which part I was going to do.

Them (on the afternoon of the 18th): Here's a spreadsheet of how to split up the work. Your rows are in yellow, and her rows are in turquoise.

I open up the spreadsheet. There are no yellow or turquoise cells. There is one column of red.

Them (in Saturday's mail): A check for $1000.