So I’ve got a little story here.

Two team members, one in math, one in engineering. We’re in a rush, because we lost almost two weeks worth of possible effort when one person got sick, and his computer had issues during the same period. We have to participate in the AI tournament on Monday. MONDAY. That is four days from the day I make this post. Pretty stressful.

One team member however seems to be not enjoying her role in the team. Because of the crimp in our plans, I was trying to shrink our plans, and re-check what we all wanted/had to do. Immediately, she fires back, “Well, wait, what did I miss here?”

“Nothing. Just going over what we need to do.”

Basically, she wanted to stick rigidly back with what we’d divided our jobs up as, over two weeks ago.

But this isn’t a story to complain about recalcitrant team members.

My point here is I was trying to adjust, adapt to a bad emergency. I didn’t communicate my goals well enough, and I’m fairly certain she’s upset with us. But we have four days left, so the really hard question is do I try to fix things? The team is going apart, and I likely won’t work with her again. Should I make her happy, despite the limited amount of time left? For different people, this answer will vary greatly, and it all depends on your personal perspective. Theres a good chance we won’t work together again, so that isn’t a worry, but having someone upset at us, for good or bad reasons is still something to be aware of.

Or, do I just learn a lesson from this ill-fated team on how to handle people, and apply it in the future?