Even if it wasn’t so much “manipulative”.
Not the most that I did, but I needed to help out a friend in college.
A friend wanted to get out of a group for a class because he was doing a lot of the work. I helped him come up with a strategy.
He was able to pull together a group of friends in non-responsive or disintegrated groups into his. He could then sell to the professor that he was being proactive in getting this group made as it would be easier for the professor than handling the fallout of these people not having groups. He could then leave his group while focusing on pulling together this group; that other group totally did enough work that they could go off by themselves.
He was able to get the professor to approve the change a day before a major due date.
Apparently, one of his group mates was able to figure out that I had to be involved because of how slick this went off.
