Teamwork?

Either I'm massively unlucky or I'm cursed.

As well, I'm sure that proper, nice, working teams do probably exist on this planet; it's just that I've never met one.

My very first encounter with "serious" teamwork was a few aeons ago when I was in primary school. Our teacher took the whole class to a castle where we were taught about elementary architecture. Then, we were randomly put together in teams of five, and we had to draw the plan of the house of our dreams.

The one thing I remember vividly is that, when I objected to having a garage and I said we should all ride bikes (yes, at 9, I was already quite conscious that cars weren't that good for the planet), the bully in my group declared that I was an idiot, and I was properly and thoroughly ignored after that. I wanted to refuse to add my name to "our" project, but the teacher didn't listen to me because I "needed" the grade.

Let's fast forward to work as an adult.

I've been to countless meetings where the team boss listened to his voice as he read a leaflet that I could have read in five minutes.

I've had colleagues ignore me because they thought they were better than I. It wasn't a question of rank or brain... No, they were convinced that they knew, they were right, and I was the village idiot.

In big companies, I've seen Office 15 ignore Office 78 because there's a merry war going on between them. Too bad that the rest of us were caught in the crossfire, eh? 

So much for teamwork.

Oh, and there's the plonkers who control everything and makes everybody's lives miserable because they're incompetent and/or petty.

There may be no "I" in team, but if you're going to ignore me anyway, why should I use my lovely brain to help you since you're going to screw things up anyway?

I'm not going to give up though. It's got to be nice to work with people who value your knowledge, listen to you, and work together to be efficient and quick.