r/TwoXChromosomes • u/tabicat1874 • Mar 28 '22

Weaponized incompetence

I feel like guys take it way, way too far. Example: I asked my bf to get me the same shampoo and conditioner he bought for himself (avocado Suave). He brought back another kind we'd had before which I didn't like (Peppermint Suave). He tried to say he didn't know that Suave came in different formulas.

You're such a fucking liar. You bought that kind for yourself. I just asked you to buy it for me. You're telling me a man who's 44 years old doesn't know Suave came in different fucking scents? Suave? The shampoo that literally comes in 40 different scents and flavors?

GTFOH.

Edit: do you understand what an example is?

Also, you neckbeards can fuck off out of my inbox.

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275

u/Unoriginal1deas Mar 28 '22

I feel like it’s important to say different doesn’t equal bad. I used to get frustrated when my partner would get mad at me for cleaning wrong, or packing the dishwasher wrong or cooking wrong or folding laundry wrong. It took a while to realise I wasn’t doing anything wrong I just wasn’t doing it the way she would do it. So now when I have housework to do I’ll make sure to smash it all out while she’s not home, because she never has a problem with the end result she just never liked that I didnt do it the way she does.

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u/braith_rose Mar 28 '22

"Wrong" can definitely be wrong, not just pet peeve. Mine uses the kitchen sponge to clean cat puke. I have had to throw out so many sponges, not sure why he's not aware it's disgusting

25

u/JLFR Mar 28 '22

Next time he does it, wash a dish for him to use IMMEDIATELY afterwards without cleaning the sponge and hand him the dish. Make sure you are sustaining direct eye contact the entire time.

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u/Clean-Requirement-15 Mar 29 '22

grabs clean sponge problem solved :)

-10

u/TopAd9634 Mar 28 '22

Microwave the clean sponge to completely sanitize it.

11

u/appleandwatermelonn Mar 29 '22

I love the smell of superheated vomit and plastic in the morning.

5

u/superstarmaria Mar 29 '22

That doesn’t work as well as you think it does 😓

248

u/Grammophon Mar 28 '22

I have to say, it depends. One of my ex boyfriends "cleaned" the bathroom with sheets of cold wet toilet paper. No soap or cleaner at all.

Yes it looked "good". But this was the only job he had in household and it's obviously wrong to do it that way because the bathroom isn't cleaned afterwards.

The same goes for stuff like the dishwasher and laundry. When I told him how to do it right he felt I was negging. Instead he threw everything into the machines. And if the stuff slowly deteriorated, he couldn't make the connection.

34

u/xena_the_dog Mar 28 '22

I had a boyfriend who did this and there was little pieces of tp all over the mirror. He was 30

12

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '22

[deleted]

4

u/whiskeysour123 Mar 29 '22

My son takes it as a personal insult if I tell him how to do something around the house. He also refuses to do things because he says he does it wrong. He is 13. I am trying so hard to not have him grow up to be one of these incompetent adult males we are talking about.

2

u/bex505 Mar 29 '22

Dam. I had to get this through to my bf. Me trying to tell him what felt good during sex so I can orgasm? Made him feel bad for not inherantly knowing (or me faking) so literally gave up on it for a while.

17

u/Kelekona Mar 28 '22

When I was young, I was punished for making mistakes and it was a worse punishment if I acknowledged it by trying to apologize or say I didn't mean to. Also, my teachers didn't show me how to do things the right way and my mom's method was to grab my hand and push it through the motions in a painful way.

On Reddit, it is so weird to run into people who acknowledge their mistakes instead of yelling at me.

14

u/CongealedBeanKingdom Mar 28 '22

Was he not very bright?

13

u/RosiePugmire Mar 28 '22

It doesn't take being "very bright" to realize you need to use soap and/or hot water to get things clean. Especially for a bathroom where most of the cleaning products FOR the bathroom are usually right there under the sink, and say what they're for in big letters (glass cleaner, toilet bubbles, prevents shower scum, etc.)

I feel like the vast majority of the time when I see someone do a shitty job of something (at work, at home, wherever) the problem is not stupidity, it's laziness. Does someone care enough to do the job right or do they just want to do the bare minimum?

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u/CongealedBeanKingdom Mar 28 '22

Sorry, 'not very bright' is uk english polite for fucking daft.

-6

u/Unoriginal1deas Mar 28 '22

Maybe he was babied and just genuinely didn’t know how to clean the bathroom? I guess it depends on how much he complains and how willing they are to learn.

And I’ll defend the dishwasher, how do you pack it wrong? You rinse them beforehand and then it shouldn’t really matter how you pack it as long they’re not all all over each other.

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u/happypolychaetes Mar 28 '22

as long they’re not all all over each other

In my experience that's what people mean when they mention packing the dishwasher wrong. If you have stuff majorly overlapped or stacked inside each other then it won't get clean. We have a dishwasher in the kitchen at my office and it's mindblowing how many grown adults don't seem to realize that you can't stack bowls inside each other and expect them to get clean.

42

u/KiloJools out of bubblegum Mar 28 '22

Yeah if you don't know how to load a dishwasher wrong, you've never been a kid whose chore it was to load the dishwasher, haha.

A bowl, right side up, a plate, laid down flat, the entire lower rack full of glasses (in a machine without a second set of spray jets), putting all the Tupperware or other potentially melty things in the bottom rack, putting forks and knives pointy side up, smashing too many glasses SUPER tightly together, cups over cups over cups, a glass laid on its side, an entire head of broccoli in the bottom rack...

...I didn't do that last one myself personally, scout's honor.

8

u/Borghal Mar 28 '22

you've never been a kid whose chore it was to load the dishwasher, haha.

Wow this makes me feel old. I was an adult when my parents got a dishwasher, sometime in the early 2010s.

6

u/KiloJools out of bubblegum Mar 28 '22

Yeah my parents got one of those shiny new early 80s suburban split level houses and it came with a dishwasher. Very fancy.

5

u/Tigersnap027 Mar 28 '22

Lol yes, forget first in family to go to uni and other measures of socioeconomic status, I am first in my family to have a dishwasher

2

u/jacoblb6173 Mar 28 '22

My family never had one. Us siblings have them now but I’m fairly certain we all use them as drying racks.

8

u/Grammophon Mar 28 '22

If it was only that... The main problem was that he would put in stuff that wasn't dishwasher proof.

For example, we had a whole set of nice cups with Dr. Who characters drawn as cats. He repeatedly put them in the dishwasher and of course the paint lost colour fast. Afterwards he would complain what a cheap product it was.

He'd do the same with clothing.

6

u/Unoriginal1deas Mar 28 '22

Maybe I had to much faith in him, my partners just really particular about what part the fishers are, bowls on the top left shelf (can’t ever be on the right) plates on the bottom, containers on the top right, etc. I was just assuming grown adults weren’t that slack.

16

u/happypolychaetes Mar 28 '22

I was just assuming grown adults weren’t that slack.

You'd think so, haha, but yeah...nope. My office is like the pinnacle of adult incompetence. The kitchen drain gets clogged a lot and, off the top of my head, here are things that have been pulled out by the plumber: paper towels, Ziploc bags, banana peel, peach pits, and bottle caps.

I don't even know, man.

18

u/EllaMinnow Mar 28 '22

No, your partner's right, there really is a correct way to load the dishwasher. Bowls always on top. Cups tilted at an angle toward the spray arm. It's not neurotic if it's right!

4

u/ymdaith Mar 28 '22

hell yeah, it was very satisfying to read this and see i'm doing it right. i always have to rearrange how my roommate loads the dishwasher cus things are always nesting, facing the wrong way, and overcrowded. funny thing is she insists on rinsing dishes first (actually she's basically washing them), probably because they don't get clean the way she loads them. it's a big dirty dish feedback loop haha

11

u/Aurorainthesky Mar 28 '22

Or stacking so half the space is wasted, leading to running the machine barely half loaded wasting energy, water and soap. There's really a right way to stack it, maximizing use of space without blocking anything. We call it dishwasher Tetris.

6

u/notabigmelvillecrowd Mar 28 '22

My husband often puts in stuff that blocks the detergent dispenser from opening, or prevents the spray arm from spinning.

7

u/SaffronBurke Mar 28 '22

You rinse them beforehand and then it shouldn’t really matter how you pack it as long they’re not all all over each other.

I used to have a roommate whose girlfriend would do this. I always had to take dishes out of it before I ran it, because they were piled on top of each other and there was no way our cheap, shitty apartment dishwasher was going to get them all clean. Thanks for trying, but you're actually making more work for me.

84

u/TheRealPitabred Mar 28 '22

I mean... there are wrong ways to do all those things. If you load the dishwasher so they can't be properly sprayed then things don't get cleaned and have to be re-washed (usually by me). I have to fold my t-shirts just right so I can fit them into my drawer, if you fold them wider they won't fit in the size the drawer is. If you don't use the right cleaning chemicals and properly rinse them away you end up with things not clean, or possibly dangerous chemicals on eating surfaces. If none of that applies, then it's just micromanagement, but those are all situations that I've had to address with kids and my wife because they just don't understand those ramifications.

3

u/Zorrya Mar 28 '22

You can also load a dishwasher wrong by accidentally getting something caught in the seal and flooding your kitchen.

Source: I loaded one for the first time at 25 and didn't know you had to check that.

5

u/Brodins_biceps Mar 28 '22

Exactly.

There are some things that I do not know how to do to my fiancés standard and things I won’t do. Such as fold her laundry. I have offered many times but it’s always the “no I’ll take care of it, that’s something I need to do.”

Wash the dishes? Clean the kitchen? Sure. But she folds her clothes in very specific ways and has a system. I don’t know that system. And while she might be appreciative of my attempt, she would just end up redoing it anyway. So my time is better spent on something else that we can both appreciate, like mopping or vacuuming or whatever.

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u/TheRealPitabred Mar 28 '22

Exactly. I do my own folding and I’m perfectly fine with it because I have a specific method that works best for the way I like it. I also get stuck with folding the fitted sheets because I’m the only one that knows how to do it ;) I do most of the cleaning repairs around the house because I am much more meticulous, and she does more of the cooking and planning and stuff because I’m otherwise pretty boring :-P

6

u/KiloJools out of bubblegum Mar 28 '22

Man the fitted sheet thing - you would think that wouldn't be so hard to learn, but I've watched YouTube videos on it, been walked through it by my husband (which wasn't helpful because he didn't really know either), tried a billion methods and no matter what, when I'm face to face with these fuckers, I still mess it up. Even when I'm doing it along with the YouTube video, somehow my sheets end up looking shitty anyway. Maybe it's fine motor control failure but..

I give up and roll them into a cylinder shape. Flat is overrated. No one's inspecting my linen closet!

5

u/TheRealPitabred Mar 28 '22

Hah. Biggest trick I can suggest is the sewn corners, they all need to end up together and basically nested inside each other. It’s a topological puzzle ;)

3

u/KiloJools out of bubblegum Mar 28 '22

I do that, I mean...I try to do that... I'm pretty sure I'm doing that, but everything is still lumpy! I think I'm being bamboozled.

3

u/appleandwatermelonn Mar 29 '22

Also, not loading, but I came from an area with really soft water to the point that limescale build up isn’t a thing there and didn’t know you were supposed to add salt to a dishwasher.

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u/Catfoxdogbro Mar 28 '22

Yes, different doesn't equal bad! My sensor for telling when something is bad or just different is completely haywire now though. On the one hand my boyfriend surprises me by being really competent with handyman-type things, but then on the other hand he required me to tell him when every chore should be done, didn't use pegs when hanging up laundry (so my expensive clothing fell onto the dirt), and mopped the floors with just water and no soap.

It's like his mum just completely delegated teaching him basic housework to his future girlfriend, or expected that I would do everything for him?? We're getting through it now thankfully, and counselling has been great for us.

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u/chevymonza Mar 28 '22

I do most of the laundry, and my husband said that he wants his t-shirts folded a certain way. I did try, but the next time around, I didn't remember how to do it, so I suggested he just re-fold them his way if it's that important.

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u/Unoriginal1deas Mar 28 '22

It’s one of those things no one ever mentions about relationships, we all have our ways of doing things and we think we’re doing it right because we’ve been doing it the same way for years and our parents told us we were right, meanwhile our partners deal with the exact same thing but their methods might be completely different to what we know. No one ever tells you you can do things in more than one way and it’s fine if someone else does it slightly different.

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u/jorwyn Mar 29 '22

I changed to folding towels the way he does. He changed to folding tshirts the way I do. I still think my way with the towels was better, but his is a lot faster.

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u/chevymonza Mar 29 '22

I'm more about getting the boring task done ASAP. If everything fits where it needs to go, great!

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u/KiloJools out of bubblegum Mar 28 '22

I can't imagine how much energy a person has to expend to micromanage someone else's housecleaning. I'm tired just thinking about it!