So I went as a pair, but from the start, he’s contributed literally nothing. From me contacting the guide, to choosing a topic, and fighting with him to convince my topic was good, and him using literal Chatgpt responses to show me why my topic wasn’t a good fit, me writing the entire prelims abstract for the screening round during my winter vacation….
Plus whenever I asked him for help, he’d tell me his parents were scolding him for wasting time in these competitions and that he’s getting too involved in this.
The only thing he contributed once was a Chatgpt document summarising what I wrote into points, after I painstakingly wrote the entire thing:/
And the worst part in the initial stages, he didn’t pay me his share of the registration fees until after we got selected, like 3 weeks later, saying he was broke, but he clearly had enough to go and eat out with his friends (and not tell me at that).
After we got selected, once again, I was the only one reading and learning stuff for the expected qns the judges would ask us, I gave him a topic split but he’d study only a single topic from those, and then question me on how much I’d studied, and giving me wrong answers for whatever he asked me, and I’d have to correct him and he’d never take responsibility for even getting the most basic stuff wrong.
AND, I was the one who made the entire powerpoint presentation, went through almost 80 pages of data and values and info and arranged it, but he never once helped or even responded, he’d go to bed by 11 30 sharp and would just cut me off if I tried to ask him to do any work.
And for the final presentation, when I tried to give him atleast a small part of the ppt to present, he kept saying he wanted a bigger part, but he’d read so slowly (since he’s a pretty poor speaker imo) that he just ate up the entire allotted time, so I had to write the script for him, coach him on how to speak for his tiny 1 min part, and I was left presenting the remaining 13 mins plus handle all the judges qns….
And, he’s telling me I should get our guide a gift (which I got anyway), but he never contributed a share to that as well….
EDIT since so many people asked….:-
My friends…. Understand I suppose. All of them burst out laughing after seeing our presentation, they found it amusing that he talked for only 2 mins, even my guide asked him what he was contributing….
And honestly, the work I’ve done on this project wasn’t over a week or two, it was a few months…. Before this, I considered him a really good friend… But he approached me and told me we should team up….
Each time I called him and he didn’t step up, I thought to myself, it’s fine, he’s a friend, he’ll help out later….
But then the past few weeks, quite a few people literally came up to me and asked, oh we thought he was going solo, didn’t know he had a teammate….
And, just a few days back, I bought a ticket to an event.. I was an hour late, got last on the way to the place, so I told him to keep it safe, he told me he’d sell my ticket and give me the profit, I thought why not, atleast I’ll get something out of it…guess what he did, he sold it for a profit ofc, gave me the original money I paid, and told me the extra money they got was rightfully his coz he sold it….
If he retrospectively changes deals and doesn’t keep his word, why does anyone expect me to be fair….
I guess I should have added that context to explain my resentment….
I have no clue of this will sour the group now, but everyone’s seen how unfair the workload was, they know if, it would’ve looked awful if I didn’t give him a chance at all is what I was thinking, but even after the presentation, he told me we were definitely going to lose and went out, when we won, I was the only one there, I had to call him back and wait for him….
I haven’t told him about the uneven split yet, but yeah, would it be an AH move to go ahead with it?
TLDR : Lazy teammate who’s contributed almost nothing, does he deserve to get an even split of the prize?
NTA.
How much are we talking?
YWNBTA
i mean… as long as there’s no written agreement with the hosts of the competition saying you will each get 50/50 or something like that, screw em😂 just reimburse him his entry fee
YTA for enabling him doing nothing. There had to be protocol to tell someone so you could beget a valid partner or ???? I feel like since you allowed him to remain your partner you kind of set yourself to give him half the prize, no?
Honestly, NTA, if someone did that to me, I probably do the same thing you are. However, one caveat. I would first deduct all the money you paid out of pocket for the project from the prize money to reimburse yourself for expenses that he didn’t contribute to. If you both split an expense, don’t include that, just include what you paid on your own. Then, if there where say 10 things that had to be completed in order to complete your comeptition entry and defend it to the judges, then split the reward money into 10th, and you get 1/10th for every part you did on yout own, and he gets 1/10th for every part he completed on his own, if you both worked on and contributred to a part equally, then you spllit the 1/10th. It seems overly complicated, but since you’ve already put in so much work on the project itself, this shouldnt be too complicated for you, plus it justifies the split in the award money.
He’d only get his entry fees if I did that…. 😛
Well, theres your answer!
NTA. Just pay em back his entry fee. Keep the rest. If he don’t like it, tell him he should have done more and to kiss your ass.
Morally, no, NTA. People who don’t contribute don’t deserve a share of the spoils.
BUT…
In your post, you write at length about what you contributed every step of the way, and how he did almost nothing. You write about *repeatedly* asking him for his share of the work and the money (registration fee, abstract, question prep, powerpoint presentation, final presentation script, gift for the guide, etc.), and how he repeatedly failed to cough up.
Yet *not once* do you write about confronting him with “You’re not doing your share. If you fail to do your share even one more time, I’m entering this competition alone.”
Did you ever say this to him? If you did, what was his response?
If you didn’t, then why didn’t you?
We can’t back out once we register, we get added to multiple groups as well, I’ve never heard of anyone kicking their teammate off, plus Ik I’d be the one seen as the villain here since he’s the more popular of us two….
I repeatedly told him to step up, you’re being absolutely useless ryt now, he’d nod his head, try to find faults in whatever I was doing at the moment (like take out my presentation and say stuff like this bullet point needs to go back a space, I’ve studied this 1 topic, oh my head hurts from studying so much, and then he’d either leave me alone and go off with his friends, or go home)…. I don’t know how else I could’ve handled this differently without completely ruining the relationship and more importantly, destroying my image as well
*I don’t know how else I could’ve handled this differently without completely ruining the relationship*
What relationship? The one between you and him?
It’s ALREADY ruined. Whether you split the prize money with him or not, any friendship you had with him is already over.
*more importantly, destroying my image as well*
Your image with whom? Your friends?
So tell them the truth: he contributed nothing. Show them this Reddit post. Tell them they’re welcome to enter the next competition with him as a teammate, and they’ll find out for themselves just how lazy and unreliable he is.
Look, you can’t force everyone to believe your word against someone who is more popular, more charismatic, more… whatever. Sadly, in this world, the virtuous don’t always get their reward, and wrongdoers don’t always get their deserved punishment.
But you can behave with integrity. You can stand firm and say “THIS is what happened. He knows it, and if he tells you otherwise, he’s lying. If you don’t believe me, I can’t help that”.
If your friends still don’t believe you, they’re not truly your friends any more than he is, and you need to get better friends.
YWBTA If you do it sneakily instead of being honest about your reasoning.
I give you this judgment because you seem to have been really caught up in other people’s opinions of you as a reason that you kept this partner.
You decided the price of using them for social capital was doing all the work.
If you don’t tell him and deal with it head on, it will come out. He’ll tell someone what the prize he received was, someone else will go, that’s not right, I thought the prize was such and such and then you’ll still be the social outcast for being a liar and a user and no one will listen to your defense.
YWNBTA.
How I see this is everyone in a group project getting the credit and the one who did nothing for it getting no credit. Why reward no effort towards the win?
Nta I’d only pay him the registration fee that he paid for.