What did you do in school or college when you had group work and someone did not contribute?

Question

I have allways hated group work. I am the classic type A personality over acheiver and i would get stuck with people who would shoot for a C rather than an A. they did not contribute and if they did there work was sub standard. In High school i would have to redo their work to make sure we got a good grade . In college i started labeling who did what to make sure they knew my work was good. One time one girl never did anything i did not put her name on the assigment and she failed .
What are your experiences with group work even at you jobs

Answer 1

Yes, that used to be something that happened to me quite frequently. I used to get very frustrated about it, especially with the people you mentioned who don't ever show up for class even and still try to take credit for the group project. After playing the fool and just doing everything myself and earning the other cretins in my group an A, I started to get tired of being the "project geek," so the next time I was faced with a situation like that, I surreptitiously included a note to the teacher with the project, letting her know that a particular student did absolutely nothing. I felt like a bit of a tattletale, but I'm no doormat- I'm not going to earn someone else's grades for them. Also, I resented how they would all clamor over me when it came time to pick groups for English or Biology or something, but I never got so much as a second glance from those same kids when it came time to sit somewhere in the lunchroom or get picked for sides in dodgeball or something. They didn't help me, so I stopped helping them.

Unfortunately, now I'm all grown up and still having to deal with this sort of thing. There's a woman at my office who pushes all her work that involves a particular computer program onto me, claiming she's "swamped," but she and I know that the real reason is that she doesn't know how to work the program and I do. I have made it known to the supervisor that this is happening, and now at least she's aware of it, but it still happens.

Answer 2

Grrrr. This is sort of a pet peeve of mine. A couple of years ago, I was going to try and go for master's online, and I got so frustrated after first introductory class, especially with this team project format that I discontinued studies after that.....I got stuck with a bunch of people for whom English was obviously not their first language, and I couldn't communicate well with them over message board posts to even try to divide up assignments, plus I didn't know how to edit and correct their grammar, etc. without hurting their feelings. Then of course, there were the perpetual slackers......the online class had pretty tight deadlines for assignments, and if everyone didn't post their part in a timely fashion, it was hard to assemble it and get it turned in on time. It came down to me and one other person who were really carrying the weight, but luckily, at least there was a portion of the class where we got to evaluate each other and tell who contributed what. I think being online made it even worse, because the slackers got to remain more or less anonymous and could just not respond to messages if they were trying to avoid work rather than facing their team members.
I think the theory behind this approach is that combined strengths makes for a better project, but this is almost never reality. The over-achievers always have to compensate for the slackers. I'm sure this is true in corporate environments as well, though I'm not familiar.
As a parent, I've always hated them when my kids had them, too. I don't want my kid's grade dependent on another kid. My kids, who are gifted/talented, invariably get paired with a slower kid to try and balance things out, so guess who is stuck doing the project?? Or, if they get to choose their partner, they will pick their buddy and then goof off.
The time it was a take-home parent involvement group project, guess which mom got stuck driving to the store and buying the supplies, and having the mess to clean up at home after they worked on it?
I think teachers who assign these either never had kids, don't have them yet, or forgotten what it's like because if they had been on the other end of one of these projects lately, they would recognize the pitfalls.