Some people refuse to pull their weight. If you’re not careful, they can use you or take you down with them.

There is another way to deal with this type. Check out how it worked.

A lazy groupmate getting what he deserves

This happened a while ago when I was still in training school. Our lecturer split the class into groups for a presentation assessment.

At the time, the school was in a transitional phase. We were moving from a system of one school year, one year of onboard training, then another school year, to a new system with two consecutive school years followed by onboard training in the final year.

One group project was pretty simple.

It was a maritime training school for sailors. I belonged to the batch that had already completed onboard training in our second year and then joined the second-year class for what would be my final school year, since we shared the same syllabus.

Because of this, when the lecturer formed the groups, he made sure each group had at least one person with onboard experience. Naturally, I became the group leader. I was also the only one with a laptop, which didn’t hurt.

Including me, the group had four people. We were given one week to complete the presentation. It wasn’t difficult at all and everything we needed was either in the school library or easily available online.

I divided the work based on what I thought each person could handle and told everyone to send me their part once they were done so I could compile the presentation and plan how we would present it.

The other two members and I finished our parts within a day or two because the material was simple. The last guy didn’t.

The team had every reason to be annoyed.

I repeatedly reminded him to do his part and told him to ask me for help if he needed it. Every time, he said it was fine. We also held a few group meetings to discuss the presentation, but he never attended, despite being invited, always giving some excuse.

He finally sent his part at midnight, right before the day we were supposed to present. By then, there was no time to add his work to the presentation or discuss how he would present it.

I had already completed his section myself because he hadn’t been responding to my messages. It only took me an hour or so to complete his part. It wasn’t really anything complicated.

The next day, just before our presentation, I informed the lecturer of what had happened and showed him the message history where I had repeatedly reminded the guy about his responsibilities.

Fortunately, their lecturer was on their side.

The lecturer postponed our presentation by one day so the rest of us could prepare properly. As for the lazy guy, the lecturer removed him from our team and made him do an entirely new presentation by himself.

Later on, that guy tried to push a false narrative that I had sabotaged him because I hated him. Nobody bought it.

Everyone had already seen and heard me reminding him multiple times to do his part. On top of that, I always sent those reminders in our class group chat and directly tagged his @, so the message history was there for everyone to see.

Here is what people are saying.

It’s infuriating.

Indeed.

Interesting. Sounds satisfying.

I LOLed literally.

True. What a scary thought.

I hated group assignments because of this nonsense.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.