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If you’re at school, or if you think back to your school days, there was nothing more polarising than the two words, group project. For some folk, a group project was exciting – a chance to work collaboratively with friends, to have relaxed lessons in which you worked together in groups, all contributing a small part of the whole. They were so much better than regular, independent school work.

And then there are the rest of us – the ones who, regardless of the group, always seemed to end up being stuck doing most of the work. Whether it was because we took it more seriously than others, whether it’s a personality thing, or simply just wanting to do a good job, if you were the person in the group who organised everything, put it all together in the end, and generally ended up patching up other people’s shoddy work – sometimes even chasing them to make sure that they actually did some work – you’ll feel the groan inside at just the memory of the two words.

So you’ve got to feel sorry for the student in this story, who is in the latter group – the guy in the group project who ends up doing all the work and making up for the things that everyone else neglects to do. But to make it worse, the group of three has been reduced to a group of two – and even worse, the other person in the group is his ex.

Read on to find out how the project went down.

WIBTA for getting mad at my friend for working instead of doing school work?

This friend of mine, let’s call him Tom (18, male), broke up with me (17, male) after nearly a year and a half of dating almost three months ago.

It was rough being friends at first, and I was mad at him at first because of why and how it ended. It’s still rocky at the moment, but we’re cool, I guess.

We’re both still in high school and we both have jobs, but he works more than I do because he is essentially forced to pay half of the bills in house – but that’s a whole other can of beans.

Let’s see how things have changed between them now.

Anyways, before we broke up, I’d always help him with schoolwork if I understood it. We have two of the same classes this semester and I’ve attempted to help him when I could.

Currently speaking, we have a group project in our U.S. Issues class. We originally had another group member, but he dropped the class.

This other group member, Alex, had some information on our topic written down, but he lost the paper. Which I can understand, drop the class, lose the paper, that’s fine. But apparently, Tom was the one who found the site for the information that was written down.

This shocked me because Tom hasn’t done all that much to help with research. He’s just watched Instagram Reels the entirety of class while Alex and I would work on the project, but since Alex has dropped the class, I think I’ll be doing the project alone from here on out.

And now he’s getting really frustrated with Tom.

I have pointed out before that Tom is on his phone the entirety of class, but he hasn’t defended himself or tried to help. I know he works five days a week after school and being a shift leader is more responsibility, but it doesn’t justify leaving me hanging to carry his dead weight.

He’s at work as I’m typing this and he has yet to respond to any of my texts in hours – and I know that Arby’s of all places cannot be that busy on a Monday night.

If he doesn’t respond, I’m going to take his name off the project and explain to my teacher what happened. I don’t think he’s typed a single word on the slide presentation.

Would I be wrong for going to my teacher and explaining that Tom didn’t help at all?

WIBTA?

It really sucks that, now that the other group member has left, this guy is being forced to do the entirety of this supposedly group project.

However, you do have to feel sorry for his ex, who is working far too much around school in order to support his household.

This isn’t a good situation for anyone.

Let’s see what the Reddit community made of this.

This person thought that his ex was taking advantage.

Though others warned that he should have spoken up earlier.

Meanwhile, this Redditor thought that putting it to the teacher was the best course of action.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a mom who wants her daughter to help pay for her own cell phone, but her daughter says she can’t force her to get a job.

The truth is that, like it or not, this guy’s ex is in an awful position. For whatever reason, he is being hugely parentified, being made to work unsustainable hours around his schoolwork, and seeing likely none of that money himself, all to keep his family afloat. It’s really sad that he’s in that situation, because the sad truth is that this is going to have a significant impact on his schoolwork and his ability to succeed in later life. Because when you’re exhausted from being forced to take on too many responsibilities, far too early in your life, everything suffers.

That being said, this isn’t the fault of his ex-boyfriend, who is now being made to put together an entire group project all alone. And the reality of group projects is that they’re designed to be done by an entire group for a reason – they’re too much work for one person to do alone. Now that the third group member has left, and his ex is more focused on earning his family money than contributing to the project, it’s totally understandable that this guy is feeling like he’s been dealt the short straw. Because really, he has. But now this is for his teacher to deal with.