High school group projects are basically a crash course in unequal labor.

When this student spent months building her team’s business competition entry while her teammates barely lifted a finger, she expected at least a little recognition.

What she got instead was a post-win trophy grab that turned the whole celebration into a cold war.

Read on to see how the teacher ended up settling it.

AITA for potentially ruining a friendship over a trophy?

So basically I ran a business with three sort of friends for a competition because my teacher wouldn’t let me do it by myself.

We’re not particularly close friends but we get on pretty well and they’re some of the only people I talk to at school.

Admittedly, this student took on way more than her fair share for the project.

I carried the entire project from start to finish and did every piece of work to ensure that we would be successful.

Because it was a business competition we had to appear well balanced and that we worked well together, so I basically allowed each person to pretend they took on a portion of the work I did so it looked fair, despite me spending a few months of long days preparing for this and none of them even contributed really.

So when they finally ended up winning, splitting up the prize led to some major drama.

I did join their business late initially but they wouldn’t have even qualified if I hadn’t done the work and we just won a big prize in the final.

We split the prize money equally, which I didn’t mind really but I got irrationally angry when one of the people on my team tried to take the trophy without even asking me.

It turns out that she had asked the other two in the group and not me as well.

Soon the teacher ended up punishing all of them.

I got upset about it and tried to convince her to let me keep it and now the teacher is keeping the prize for the school so none of us get to keep the trophy.

I’m sure one of us would have gotten to keep it if I hadn’t made a deal out of it, but I did literally all of the work so I’m not sure if I was totally wrong.

Now the student feels the whole thing was totally unfair.

It was a group project but I did the work for four people and I don’t feel like I got any recognition for it, but now there’s a really awkward dynamic between me and my friends and I feel like it’s my fault.

AITA for feeling like none of them acknowledged how much work I put in and insisting that I got to keep the trophy?

Ah, yes — the dreaded group project.

What did Reddit have to say?

There’s a much bigger life lesson hidden somewhere in all this high school drama.

No one likes a slacker.

It’s clear these classmates never had good intentions.

Maybe the trophy was always going to stay at the school.

When you do the work of four people, asking for a little recognition is pretty expected.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a guy who is tired of paying for group outings up front because he never seems to get paid back.