Last semester, Vand Y who were good friends, worked on a project together with three others. V was allocated the task of doing citations for their written report. After V had completed her part, she sent the report to Y, who was supposed to check the report before submitting it.
Y was unsatisfied with the way V did the citations, as she felt that V’s work was slipshod and not according to what they had discussed before. Y then spent the night re-doing the citations, as the submission deadline was the very next day. After which, she sent an email to the entire group to tell them what happened, and even highlighted to V that she should have put more effort into the task. V felt that Y had not been clear with her instructions from the start, and did not want to apologize as she felt that she was not in the wrong. After this incident, V and Y did not speak to each other.
During the December break, their mutual friend J had to leave Singapore for an overseas exchange program. J invited both V and Y to her farewell dinner. That night, Y spoke to V as per normal.
At the start of the new semester, V and Y were allocated with the same module. On the first day of school, V was late for class. When she arrived, she realized that Y had not saved a seat for her like she usually did. When the class was asked to form project groups, Y did not include V in her group. This made V unhappy as they had done projects together all the while. She thinks Y is being petty, while Y makes no effort to explain her actions.
As a mutual friend of V and Y, who do you think is at fault and what would you do to remedy the situation?
6 comments:
Hi Gwen,
I think that Y is being over-reacted.
From the above situation we can know that V have done her part for the assignment. The problem is that Y have a slightly higher standard, so we cannot blame v.
Besides that, a true friendship should not be spoilt by this kind of small matter.
In this situation, I think that V can have a talk with Y to sort the problem out.
Xian Rui
Hey Gwen,
I do agree with Xian Rui. Y does seem to be over reacting and furthermore the way Y behaves is not consistent.
Y speaks normally to V when they meet to send off friend J but ignores V otherwise. This is not a very good way to behave towards a friend and I think such a matter is very petty and efforts can be made to resolve it. V confronting Y and explaining the fact that maybe Y had not been clear or agreeing that V had not understood well may help get talking about the problem and clear any misunderstandings...
So as a mutual friend I would encourage both to talk it out.
Divs
Hello Gwen!
As Xian Rui and Divya have highlighted, Y is simply being very petty if this is the first time Y felt that V's work was unsatisfactory. However, if Y had been consistently unhappy with V's work through all the projects they had done together and simply not mentioned it, then it is no surprise that Y is reacting this way after this small incident.
I also feel that Y is extremely unhappy that V does not feel "remorseful" about her so called bad work ethics which caused Y to stay up late and make ammendments. Thus, Y wants to make it known to V that she is obviously upset by the matter and ignoring V is Y's way of taking it out on V. A lot of emotions are clearly in the way for Y to accept V back.
As a mutual friend, perhaps you could talk to V and ask her to give in to Y just this once. V should make an apology but also explain out that the whole incident was a clear case of miscommunication so technically it was nobody's fault. Y simply wants gratification for her efforts I believe and the apology will settle it.
Hi Gwen,
As a mutual friend between V and Y, this gives you the opportunity to find out both sides of the story. I would suggest having a talk to V and Y separately first before coming to a conclusion on who is at fault. There could be other reasons why Y is acting in such a strange way towards V. She might not have expected V to be in the same class, as they have not talked for some time. In addition, she might already have promised her other friends in advance that she will form a group with them, not knowing that V is also in the same class.
However, seeing from an outsider’s perspective (even as a mutual friend, we will not be able to get inside information unless we seek it from the source), it would seem that Y is at fault. I am agreeable to Xian Rui’s, Divya’s and Jiv’s take on the matter. Y is definitely being difficult. Perhaps a good way to patch things up is to have a good ‘heart to heart’ conversation in a nice private place and come up with a common understanding between them so that incidents like these will not affect their friendship to such a large extent in the future.
Jon
Thank you, Gwen, for sharing this problem situation with us. It's so relevant because this is student-centered. I have to admit though that I had some difficulty simply because you used single letters as names for the characters, and the letters you selected are quite similar: Y & V. I kept having to retrace my steps to see what you had written about each.
As for who was at fault, doesn't that depend on some intangibles that have not been described in your scenario? For instance, V felt that Y was not clear in her instructions, but what if in fact she was?
The more relevant question you do ask: what can be done to remedy the situation? For that you've received good feedback.
I really appreciate you thinking this story through.
hi Gwen,
i think that Y was the one at fault.
i believe that V should try to talk things out with Y if she still want this friendship to work out, like maybe through MSN?
As a mutual friend, you could try to talk to Y regarding the issue. Or maybe you could try to ask both of them out for dinner or watch movies, as this would provide them a chance to things out.
cheers,
Shi Ting
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