Ahhhh, the group project. It’s as perennial as the grass.

And as students begin enduring the frustrations of working on these dreaded assignments, they come to me with the age-old question of why some people not only believe the rules don’t apply to them, but why they seem to get away with disregarding those rules almost every time.

You know the ones. They incessantly miss deadlines, ignore communications, blow off meetings and contribute very little when they do show up. Meanwhile, you’re scrambling to pick up all the slack.

Bad news – they are everywhere. You will encounter them in class, in clubs, in your personal life and most definitely in your work life.

And you will be as frustrated with them down the road as you are today, perhaps more when professional performance reviews and paychecks are on the line. Ultimately, the issue is ego. People who believe they are the center of the universe operate with only that center in mind.

Others, who by definition exist only in their orbit, attending them like so many of Saturn’s rings, are tangential and peripheral to their needs. They cannot conceive how their behavior affects anyone else because the only question is whether it works for them. And even if you make a strong case for how they have ruined your day, their first line of thinking will be how you should have adjusted your expectations to accommodate the problem.

That’s the diabolical part. They can so easily shift focus outside their center and over to you, but only when they need to deflect the spotlight of blame and accountability.

More bad news.

These people not only finish first sometimes, but their conduct can cause nice, decent rule-observing folks like you to finish behind them, your efforts relatively unnoticed because you created no drama, you met expectations, you got the job done quietly and as promised.

Not surprising that after a while you feel a strong temptation to bend the rules and fight flakiness with some bad behavior of your own.

But, you’re not that guy. If you were, you would never be in this position. You would have been flaking out long ago. And there’s the good news.

Many people believe that some force – God, the universe, karma – brings every person into your life for a reason, to test how you will react and treat others, and to teach you more lessons.

And believing that is one of the only ways to remain sane when dealing with losers.

They are a gift, there to remind you of why you behave differently, of why you treat others with respect.

The flakes may finish first in the short term, but surely decency is rewarded in the long term.

They say that character is doing the right thing when nobody is looking, but it’s also what you do when faced with the injustice created by people who lack character.