This semester, we had a 3-person group assignment which involved writing a project proposal, coding and data analysis, performing a survey, as well as writing a short report afterwards to summarise the work that has been done in this project. This project spanned across around 7 weeks so it's quite a large-scaled work. Let's call my other two other teammates L (he/him) and J (she/her). At later points of this story, I will refer to he/him as teammate L, and she/her as teammate J.
In the beginning of the project, the three of us wrote a project proposal in which all three of us contributed quite evenly. The professor accepted our proposal, and at this point in time I thought to myself that this project will definitely go smoothly, and felt a sense of relief. But oh boy was I wrong in the EXECUTION PHASE of the project.
When it came to workload distribution, all three of us agreed that each of us would work on a specific part of the project, merge our parts into a common codebase and write the report later on to consolidate on our works. Heck, if we don't have the code or app ready, there's nothing that we can write in the report, right? So we get started to work on our individual parts (at least that's what I thought).
So I started a Github repository and invited L and J to join this repository. L joined the repository quickly and periodically pushed the work that he has done to our codebase, whereas.... J is nowhere to be found. I tried messaging J but she ghosted me for 3 weeks, and never joined our Github repo even till the end of the project. L was an amazingly good team player, and both of us continued to have coding sessions through video calls to work on the application for this project. L's coding skills are top-notch, and he wrote most of the code for our project; the most complicated parts of this project was done by him and I could not even understand how he managed to implement the toughest and most impressive features in our application. Midway through the project alongside J ghosting us, I presented our application to the professor and the professor was amazed and blown away by it. That's how the results that L and I were able to achieve thus far (thank you L) at the absence of J. At this stage, our app was almost done and L and I still haven't gotten a response from J, and the only part left was J's part.
At this point in time, L and I decided that the two of us would just takeover J's allocated work and we assumed that she wasn't interested in contributing to the project, even for her part. Before we took over her part, I tried calling J 5 times and finally got through. She told me that "she does not know anything about how to do for her part, or for any other parts in the project" (even though the professor has covered it in lectures), and that her Final Year Project (FYP) supervisor was "being extremely unreasonable, set unrealistic expectations and deadlines". She said that her FYP actually has 2 supervisors, and she has not met her "hidden" supervisor yet, which suddenly gave additional requirements that demanded her merging her FYP with several other students in the same faculty, and that it wasn't "what I signed up for in a FYP" (In this paragraph I'm citing her exact words in quotes). She then proceeded to give more excuses that seemed like it was just made up on the spot on our phone call. In a casual voice call with her best friend, the best friend revealed that she has actually completed her FYP, and does not want to contribute in other group assignments for all subjects in this semester.
By now, the excuses that she provided gave me the worst impression that she is extremely terrible in time management, or has zero interest towards the project, or only joined our team with the intention to free ride. But hey, free riding and leeching off others is a lifestyle, and perhaps she's just REALLY GOOD at taking things for granted.
After L and I were done with the project codes and result evaluations, we were about to get started on compiling the report (it was 3 days before the hard deadline). Here, we already have the main parts of the contents, and just needed to compile it. When the two of us were on the verge of removing J's name from our group, J suddenly replied me and mentioned that she would like to work on the project report. At this point, L and I were done with writing the technical aspects of the report, with only the remaining bits and pieces of fluff to be written. L told me that her sister was tested COVID positive, and thus I have decided to split the writing work of the remaining parts of the report, seeing that L did most of the work so far and it's my time to give back. The work left wasn't much, as it was just around 2 hours worth of writing for each of us.
Later came the peer evaluation form for us to evaluate each other, and she gave extremely low marks towards L and lied that he did not contribute at all in the project, mentioning that the project might as well be just the work of J and I. Hey, excuse me?? You're the one under-performing and you're blaming another teammate?? I'm not even your friend and you're pretending that we're best friends? Can you believe it, someone who's willing to lie and steal for no reason. Extremely petty and unreasonable.
Sometimes I just can't understand what's wrong with people, especially those who are too used to lying and cheating. But to be very honest, I should have just removed her name from our group from the very beginning.
I finally get it now, some people are born to lie, cheat, and steal; it's their nature to do so.
At the end of this story, if you're asking me what I've learnt in terms of managing people: identify less contributing members early on and just chop them out of the team. If you're a free-rider who's not willing to even complete your own part, get lost and find a "better" team that suits you better. Don't be a parasite that takes things for granted and causes harm because NO ONE LIKES IT.
TL;DR: In a 3-person group project, a teammate ghosted another teammate and I throughout the whole project, and lied to the lecturer that the other teammate didn't contribute at all. Being in an online class, even though your teammates may not get the chance to know you physically doesn't mean you can just under-perform, ghost your teammates, and lie like there is no tomorrow.
"We lie, we cheat, we steal" -- United States of America Secretary, Mike Pompeo
Here are the details of the under-performing teammate J featured in this story:
Name: Nadia Ahmad Pirdaus
Student ID: 1171103742
University: Multimedia University, Cyberjaya, Malaysia
BTW, I understand that you were frustrated with the person mentioned. But, are you any good doxxing him on the internet?
What happened in your uni life, should stay in your uni life.