Were you the kind of student who did everything in a group project or just coasted?

In this situation, a young man worked on a school project that ended up being so good he was able to sell it… But now his freeloader classmate thinks he deserves a cut.

Is he wrong to disagree?

Read the full story.

AITA for selling my idea after my partner said he was out?

I (17M) had this idea for a project (vague in the name of privacy) which I wanted to work on for this competition.

My science teacher told me to include a classmate (let’s call him “Joe”, also 17M) in the project because she thought he could help me.

I built the idea in a month, it was a lot of hard work and I felt very personally connected to it.

At the beginning we talked about working together, but in reality I did all the coding, testing, and writing.

He showed up but didn’t contribute anything substantial at all.

And the project was a success.

When we joined the competition, we won a couple thousand euros prize money, it was split 50/50 because we were both registered and I felt really frustrated.

I complained to some friends, who all said I had a right to be frustrated, but I shouldn’t do anything about it. Basically, I wasn’t happy about it, but I didn’t make a scene.

During that time, I wanted to keep working on the project, but was fed up with “Joe” for not doing anything at all (truthfully nothing, this isn’t an exaggeration).

I sent “Joe” a message asking him if he wanted to keep working on the project.

He had his chance.

Now, I purposely hinted strongly that it would be a lot of work, and made it seem like an unfavorable idea by saying things along the line of:

“There is no guarantee we make money from it”, and “we would need to contribute many hours a week” to try get him to leave.

Naturally, he replied that he’d rather focus on school and didn’t want the workload.

Over the next couple weeks, I redid large parts of the project, and improved it a lot.

A company that we’d reached out to earlier that year took notice, and offered to buy the MVP and idea, and let me keep working on it.

I received a decent payout. Nothing insane, but big for someone my age, which I saved.

Joe heard about it and wasn’t happy.

This was super exciting for me, I told all my friends and family about it.

When “Joe” found out, the guy got really mad. He said I cut him out and that the original idea was “ours.”

He claims I should have at least offered him a percentage since we reached out to the company about the project when it still had both our names on it or something.

I told him I gave him the opportunity to stay involved. He declined.

I said I did 100% of the additional work, and spent hours of my time and a lot of my money on it (to make this post as truthful as possible, I exaggerated that point).

Now he’s wondering if he did something wrong or illegal.

I also feel I should add, “Joe” isn’t very popular in my school, and tends to get made fun of.

When we originally won that couple thousand euro, people in my school were giving him a hard time about freeloading, which I may have indirectly caused.

I was complaining to friends about the two way split and it led to him getting outcast ever further.

Now, when I sold the idea myself, people are saying that I’m selfish.

AITA?

I think if Joe really didn’t contribute to the project, he should be glad he got 1k from it at all.

What did Reddit think?

This person thinks he shouldn’t worry.

This commenter agrees.

Yikes. This is a good point.

Another reader chimes in.

Something to consider.

I disagree with this, since he has evidence that Joe didn’t want to participate.

He worked alone, he gets paid in full.

Joe needs to be called out on his freeloader behavior.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.