This person faked a flat tire to force his lazy fellow group members to present their project

We have seen people fake flat tires to get out of work, some with more success than others. But I've yet to come across someone who faked a flat tire for revenge. Until now. In a post on Reddit's "Petty Revenge," we learn how one person, fed up with doing all the work for a group project, faked their way out of the presentation and left their lazy fellow group members hanging.  

What they did is cruel and unusual and pretty perfect. I have a feeling you'd do the same thing too if you knew you could get away with it and you were in a similar position.  

They explain that they're in a class where the group project and presentation is a huge chunk of their grade. And they're in a group of four people, three of whom were total slackers.  

They write, "I did the entire research, presentation, poster boards, etc. among many other annoying things myself. I tried talking to them and telling them they needed to put in their share of effort. Ignored. I'd send them tasks to do, ignored." 

Requests for meetings were completely disregarded. "It was abundantly clear that they expected everyone else to do the work, but 'everyone else' turned out to be just me," they wrote.

You might be asking yourself why this person didn't just go to their teacher and explain how their whole group was slacking, but in an edit, they explain that the teacher didn't want to hear it. 

"The professor stated at the beginning that we were not allowed to contact him about people slacking in the group, and said to work it out amongst ourselves." So that's exactly what they decided to do. 

They explain that they couldn't have things totally memorized for their presentation; they had to know the material. They had prepared the entire presentation and knew they'd have to do most of the talking.

The night before the presentation, they reached out one last time to let their team members know they should meet to go over it one last time. Of course, none of them showed up. That's when they decided they would not be showing up for the presentation.  

Of course, they needed an iron-clad excuse to get out of class on the day of the presentation. And they said that if you do have an excuse, the professor requires documentation. Since this person commutes an hour to and from school every day, they decided to fake a flat tire. They even went out and bought a new tire so they'd have a receipt to show their professor. Talk about commitment.  

They successfully presented their flat tire excuse to the professor, who told them they could come present alone during his office hours. And thus, his group members were left to languish in front of the class without the one group member who'd done the work. 

"Turns out, they completely bombed," they wrote, "and not only probably failed the project but since they're bad students might even make them fail the class." Meanwhile, they were able to do the presentation to the professor alone and probably aced it since they had done literally all of the work. 

This is probably the most extreme length I've heard anyone go to in order to get back at lazy team members during a group project, but I respect it. I think we've all been there, frustrated with people for not pulling their weight in a group project. 

Faking a flat tire was bold and risky, but it ultimately paid off. And those three team members learned their lesson, I'm sure. Commenters on Reddit were extremely impressed with this level of petty revenge. "You are an evil genius," someone wrote. "I hope you go far in life my friend. These people 100 percent deserved this. Bravo."

So many people in the comments had stories of similarly frustrating group project scenarios, but none of them quite took it to the lengths that OP did. A true hero for our time. 

Editor's Note: The article was originally published in March 2020.