Group projects are meant to test teamwork, but what they’re really best at teaching is patience.

When one slacker tried to weasel his way into a grade he hadn’t earned, the rest of his group project members escalated the issue all the way to the top of the university.

The freeloader quickly learned that excuses don’t count toward the final grade.

Read on for the full story.

Guy didn’t contribute to group project, so i left his name out of the assignments.

In my major, there is this guy P.

P is well known to be a bit of a good-for-nothing when it comes to completing tasks from the professor.

He is also a loner, but not the “I’m so smart, and I like to be alone” kind.

More like “I’m a loner and not a very smart one at that.”

Slacking doesn’t really pay off in a class like this.

One of our professors is the type who, no matter how good and perfect your work is, rarely gives an A.

For our final assignment, he gave us a group project where we had to write a paper and present it.

The assignment made up 40% of our final grade, and since scoring below 60 meant failing, this project was crucial.

This student, on the other hand, took their grades very seriously.

The professor allowed us to choose our own group members.

I picked two people I knew would do well, along with one other person who was a good friend of one of them.

We had three months to complete the project.

Since the professor rarely gave A’s — mostly B’s, or if you were lucky, an AB (which I think is just a B+) — we worked hard on both the paper and the presentation for the full three months.

When the deadline was only four days away, we had already finished and submitted our work.

We felt relieved, thinking there were no issues ahead.

But their trouble was just beginning.

Oh, how wrong we were.

On the day of the deadline, P suddenly contacted one of our group members, asking when we were going to start working on the assignment.

The group member forwarded P’s message to our group chat, and we were all dumbfounded — we hadn’t even known he was part of our group.

The TA filled them in on what happened.

I reached out to the TA for clarification.

It turned out that one of the last groups didn’t have enough members, so the TA dissolved that group and reassigned its members to other groups.

When I asked when this had happened, the TA told me it had been two months ago.

The TA then asked why I was bringing this up now.

I explained the situation, but she didn’t like it one bit.

The TA didn’t give the other students in the group the benefit of the doubt.

She assumed we had intentionally ignored P and were bullying him because he was a loner.

I was frustrated, mostly at P, but also at the TA.

It turned out P had also contacted the TA, claiming that he had been ignored by our group.

I asked the group member he had messaged to take screenshots of their conversation, including the timestamps, and I forwarded everything to the TA.

They then had to include P in the group message.

After some time, the TA got back to me, saying she would talk to P about it.

A few hours later, she asked us to add P to the group chat.

We reluctantly agreed.

But things weren’t going to go smoothly.

As soon as P joined the chat, he asked which part of the presentation was his to present.

This sparked a huge argument.

P tried to claim certain topics, but the group members who had worked on those topics refused.

Each time he chose something, someone else had already completed it.

So P went back to the TA to tattle again.

Frustrated, P complained to the TA that he wasn’t being given a topic to present.

(Who would have thought that trying to take credit for someone else’s work would get you nowhere?)

Since the paper had already been submitted, the TA suggested that P research a new topic that wasn’t in our presentation and add it to the slides.

That way, at least he could get the presentation score.

This made P even madder.

P didn’t like that one bit.

Not only did he have to do actual work, but he had also missed out on the bigger portion of the grade from the paper.

He argued with the TA, refusing to do the extra research.

Eventually, P escalated things by threatening to report our group to the administration for bullying.

He also accused the TA and the professor of enabling the bullying.

At one point, he even questioned the TA’s credibility, saying, “Where is your credibility as a TA?”

So now the TA turned against P too.

The TA had had enough.

She took screenshots of her entire conversation with P and sent them to me.

P followed through on his threat and reported us to the administration.

The administration reached out to the TA for an explanation and then contacted our group members to ask why we hadn’t included P in the project.

One student realized they had even more evidence of P’s slacking.

Around the same time, I remembered that P and I shared four classes that semester.

Two of those classes also had group assignments where P and I were in the same group.

I checked the group chats for those assignments and found that P had never once mentioned the paper and presentation.

He had never even reached out to any of us about it.

So they took their evidence all the way to the top.

I took screenshots of those conversations and sent them to the administration, proving that P’s claims of being ignored were false.

He had simply never put in any effort until the very last moment.

After reviewing the situation, the administration decided it was up to us whether to include his name in the assignment.

We unanimously agreed not to.

But then they noticed something strange next semester.

Once the fiasco ended and the semester was over, I noticed something when I enrolled for my next semester — P wasn’t in any of my classes.

In fact, he wasn’t in any classes at all.

After asking around, I found out that P had failed most of his classes the previous semester.

Because of that, he had to take a semester off before re-enrolling to retake the courses he failed.

Looks like I won’t be seeing P until the end of the semester—if he even comes back.

These group members had the receipts – thank goodness for screenshots.

Let’s see what Reddit had to say.

This commenter doesn’t believe the TA really did her due diligence here.

This commenter has a rather pessimistic outlook on P’s future.

Some people make up for what they lack in drive with sheer boldness.

If you don’t do the work, you shouldn’t get the credit!

He wanted a free ride, but he was ultimately handed him a detour right out of the university.

This group had no room for freeloaders.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.