It's about time I put up something original. I want to write this one for quite a while. I've finished all assignments recently. It's also a good time to write about them because they have all finished.
I'm going to talk about my assignment partners. I guess I'm not honourable enough, otherwise I wouldn't be talking about them behind their backs here. However, some of the things they did really shocked me so they deserve to be mentioned here. In particular, I believe one of them was THE slackest postgraduate computer science student.
I had 4 projects/assignments that were group assignments. All 4 of them were in pairs. The first one was the biggest one that took about 8 weeks in the semester. The lecturer asked who weren't paired up and there were 4 computer science students that had not paired up, three Chinese faces and one European face. To cut the story short, I wanted to work in English, because I thought I had already worked in Chinese for 2 year! So I emailed that European guy and said I wanted to pair up with him. But he didn't get that email until later, and when we needed to get into pairs in the next lecture, only 'R' and I turned up. So we formed a group. And yeah, from the second day on, we worked in Chinese, sigh.
So 'R' became my project partner, and I soon noticed some signs. He ALWAYS entered the lecture room more than 15 minutes late. When he starts talking, he talks on and on and listeners might not understand what he says.
When we started working together more, it got worse. He was really slack. That's the main thing that annoyed me. The attitude. He had NEVER turned up to a meeting on time, unless it was right after the lecture. I mean NEVER, over the 8 weeks. The earliest time he turned up was 15 minutes late. The latest was about 1 and half hours late. That was an exception, but he could have contacted me sooner and rescheduled or something.
The lectures for that class are from 11am to 12. So we would eat lunch then started working afterwards. Then what happened was he often would say that he's sleepy after lunch. So he wanted to end working after an hour or so. Yeah, of course he was sleepy. During lunch, he just told me that he watched some American TV show until 4am. I thought, dude, you're taking only 2 courses this semester, and you don't have a job or any other commitments. I'm doing 4 courses, that's already busier than you as a student. I also have the lab demonstrating job, and the radio show. I probably have more rights to yawn and say I'm sleepy, but I just focused on the task at hand.
When we work together, one thing annoyed me. No, let me rephrase that, one of the main things that annoyed me was that he didn't focus on the tasks. We sat next to each other and divided the tasks. I worked on mine. After a while, when I turned to him, I'd see him reading some other web pages, news, stories, whatever. When he worked, he would switch between work and other web pages all the time. I told him to focus on the tasks for a number of times. He still did that. I felt that I was supervising a primary school kid to do his homework or something.
He always leaves his work to the last minute. Basically I couldn't get him to do much before that. There was one week that I had lots to do for other courses so I asked him to work on this project by himself that week and I'll catch up later. He said OK. After that week, I finished my other assignments and ready to continue working on this. Well, he did nothing. OK... so I asked him to set a time so we can work on this together, and he told me that he's busy with his other paper's assignment. What the?! You have only 2 courses! If you didn't work on this project last week, shouldn't you work on your other assignment then? He did nothing and left both assignments to that week.
Another event that shocked me was that 2 weeks before the project due date, I kept telling him that we had to work on this project as it was due soon. We didn't have much time, especially we had to divide our time to all the courses (well, 4+ for me. 2 for him). What he said was, it's not urgent, we still have plenty of time. This project will definitely get extension.
What?! Instead of working on it now, you want to leave it later and count on the lecturer giving you extension?! What the!!!
Try that in the workplace. You're supposed to deliver the product in 2 weeks. Your company probably has a contract with the client. If you don't deliver on time, your company will pay some penalty. The product is not complete yet and your boss asks you to work on it. You say, no worries, the client will give us extension.
Dude, you're so fired! I'd fire you without a doubt if I were your boss.
I was going to write about all 4 assignment partners. But 'R' has already taken up so many paragraphs, and I haven't finished with him yet!
OK. I've stressed the main thing, he has really bad work ethics. He's really slack. Let me try to quickly mention other things I want to say about him. The other things might not be related to work ethics but they still annoyed me.
When he talks, he talks non-stop and dumps all things he wanted to say. When I talk, he might not pay as much attention to listen. When he asked me something and interrupted my work, I answered him and opened the discussion or asked him a question in return. He sometimes told me to wait and he went on to do whatever he wanted to do.
He doesn't do what he promises. We assigned the tasks and he said he'd do them. But he usually didn't deliver.
He just focused on what he wanted to do. He didn't care too much overall plan. He considered some tasks to be trivial and didn't spend time on them. Which means they were either left to the last minute, or I had to take care of them.
Bad hygiene, he picks his nose in public, during the lecture or when we work in the lab. And he goes on to use the keyboard and mouse after he picks his nose! Get away from me! Don't touch me!
He chewed on my pen when he borrowed it.
Just in general, attitudes that I don't like. He sleeps when working on the project. He puts his feet up on the desk. He extends his legs to my seat when we sit. He barged in the lecturer's office and started asking questions without checking whether it was a good time for the lecturer or not. In general, I feel that he just cares about himself and doesn't consider for other people much.
Wow, I've just written a lot about somebody I don't like. Well, I guess it's kind of a special experience anyway. Because when I worked in my previous company, I didn't find anybody to be particularly slack. People all wanted to get things done. I guess it's also because if you're slack, you'll get fired! This is the first time I've worked with somebody who's really really slack. I guess, that's a experience I couldn't get from my previous workplace. It's not pleasant, though. Sigh.
Posts
