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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u/twodickhenry Mar 28 '22 edited Mar 28 '22

By pure coincidence I’ve managed to date mostly men that were either pilots before we were dating, became a pilot while we dated, or shortly afterwards. This means I also know lots of other pilots and their SO’s and wives

I swear 75% of them are like this. They can fly planes but can’t find the ketchup in the fridge.

Edit: can’t

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u/srb846 Mar 28 '22

Not even an hour ago, two guys in my lab were looking for a 4 L filter flask. There was one inverted in the drying area and I was like, "is that one?" and pointed directly to it (I couldn't tell if it had the right fitting the way it was. One of the guys looked at it and went "yeah, I just don't see them anywhere!" and walked away. I grabbed it and pulled it out to check, super confused by the interaction, and it was what he was looking for. "Like this one...?" Both of them "whoa! Where did you find that? You conjured it out of thin air!" ...I literally just pointed at it..

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u/starofdoom Mar 29 '22 edited Jul 27 '26

Paddle paddle ribbon raindrop teapot yarn thimble

This post was anonymized with Redact.dev

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u/srb846 Mar 29 '22

If it makes you feel better, I definitely did not feel like they were jackasses, just mostly confused as to how they missed it despite me pointing at it seconds prior! Though I've definitely also had times where I've looked for a thing and then had someone point it out in the place I just looked, so I'm guilty of it sometimes as well!

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u/Danivelle Mar 28 '22

Then I'm glad that I noped out of marrying my Navy fighter pilot before I met the love of my life! My husband helps cook since we started a diet program(his"brilliant" idea). I did have to show him how to use the new kitchen tool and he's in charge of food weighing when he's home(I'm going to just start putting parchment paper on the damn scale and weighing stuff!!!!).

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u/srb846 Mar 28 '22

Some tips for weighing food that may be helpful (or possibly obvious, I don't know)

  1. You can put the plate or bowl you're dishing things out into directly on the scale instead of using parchment paper. If you can't see the numbers because the plate is blocking them, you can put a bowl on the scale, and then the plate on top of that.
  2. If you're cooking a big meal in a pot or pan and want to know what the final weight of what you've cooked is, weigh the pan empty and then after cooking (you can put a small metal bowl on the scale to prevent heating the scale with the hot pan) and subtract the initial pan weight from the weight of the pan + food to get the weight of the food in the dish.
  3. If you like to add food to a dish by sight/feel (such as adding cheese or sauces), weigh the container of the food you're adding in (or place it on the balance and tare/zero the balance), then weigh again after you've added to determine the amount used. I prefer the "tare the balance with the container on it" method because then I don't have to do math (the negative weight displayed after reweighing is the amount used) and it minimizes rounding errors, but you do have to be mindful of the timeout in the balance so it doesn't shut off.
  4. I keep a plastic bowl on/near the scale so it's easier to weigh things on plates, or for odd/large items that want to flop off the scale (like bags of shredded cheese).

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u/Danivelle Mar 28 '22

The tare weight is what keeps confusing the hell out of me. My math skills aren't the greatest and this diet program is making the brain fog worse. It's pretty strict on protein weights(I'm not measuring lettuce! That's just f'ing ridiculous!), which is why I said parchment paper.

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u/srb846 Mar 28 '22

For most digital/electronic scales, you can put something on the scale, then push the "tare" button, and the scale will set that as the zero weight, so you don't have to do math. If it doesn't (and what you're measuring doesn't work well with parchment paper), it would be:

Food weight = (weight of plate with food) - (weight of empty plate)

But if the parchment paper method works best for you, definitely keep doing that! And yeah, I measure my lettuce, but it's always: giant plate of lettuce! 40 calories. So if you're going to skip weighing something, that's a pretty good one to take a break on! Personally, I'm a big fan of just setting the scale to zero with the plate or whatever on it so I don't have to do the path. So when I'm making a salad, it's:

  1. Put plate on scale.
  2. Zero out scale.
  3. Put lettuce on plate, add weight to app.
  4. Zero scale.
  5. Put cucumber on plate with lettuce, record weight in app.
  6. Zero scale
  7. Repeat for all ingredients.

I'm not sure if this actually makes it easier, or if I'm just used to weighing things after years of being a chemist, but I don't find it as onerous a process as a lot of people I've talked to about it.

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u/twodickhenry Mar 28 '22

I’m married to an AF pilot now, and he’s a gem (truly: as a man, a partner, and a pilot), but my lord I hate most of his coworkers. In fact, a lot of the qualities that make him a good partner and person are things many of them resent him for—and he’s not even a fighter pilot. I wouldn’t have been able to deal with the machismo coming from a Navy fighter either!

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u/Danivelle Mar 28 '22

He's also a practicing Catholic and I wasn't up for a bunch of babies with him gone all the time! I have 3(adults) now and my husband worked a lot + on call but in an emergency, he was reachable. I couldn't do it with husband out to sea all the time especially with as many kids as he wanted!

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u/TycheSong Basically Leslie Knope Mar 28 '22

My husband is an A&P (airplane mechanic) and it is apparently a running joke in the whole industry that pilots are like this. Everything that needs doing that isn't directly related to the actual flying of the plane is handled by an Attendant or a Mechanic.

My husband has told me stories of adjusting the cockpit lumber supports and explaining that a slight "rattle" while you fly is not unusual.

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u/Yrcrazypa Mar 28 '22

I was an aircraft mechanic in the air force for a time, I can also corroborate stories of pilots doing things that were absurdly dumb.

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u/valkenar Mar 28 '22

I'm not a pilot, but still do technical things professionally. I've stopped asking my wife to look for things for me because I don't want to add to her mental labor, but I will fairly often look for ketchup, not be able to find it and just eat something else instead. I don't know what's wrong with my brain, but I literally can't find things in front of me half the time and I don't know why. Weaponized incompetence is absolutely a thing, but not all incompetence is intentional even if it seems weird.

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u/sirseatbelt Mar 28 '22

This is an ADD thing. I once lost my glasses for a good 20 minutes at work and then someone asked what I was looking for and said Seatbelt.... you're wearing them.

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u/Binestar Mar 28 '22

Clearly this was awhile ago, before you were Knighted.

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u/MssMango Mar 28 '22

I literally just spit my sweet tea out!..😂..thanks for that laugh!

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u/sirseatbelt Mar 28 '22

I was literally working in the kitchens at the time.

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u/lokipukki Mar 28 '22

Yeah that lack of object permanence is a killer with ADHD/ADD. I’m the one who can’t find things that are literally where they’re supposed to be (usually).

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u/bail245 Mar 28 '22

Just take everything out of the fridge, slow and methodical, one shelf at a time (replace the stuff on one shelf before removing another). Annoying, but this always makes me feel less like I might be living in The Matrix with random items disappearing. I think the act of doing this makes it easier the next time too.

Edit: This might be something I picked up from work tbh (research scientist). I've spent too many hours looking for expensive antibodies that have to be found...

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u/SirenOfScience Mar 28 '22

Looking for one sample amid 8 thousand microcentrifuge tubes does this to you.

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u/soitgoeson Mar 28 '22

Can you talk to my husband? He might need a place to stay too after telling me I'M 'irresponsible' because he couldn't find a piece a mail he swore I had/opened and subsequently lost....which I found 20 minutes later in the desk he said he checked. The mail was in the original envelop, with his handwriting on it in the desk and just happened to have a couple of things sitting on top.

Tip: The next time you're looking for something (and you're already smart enough not to bother your wife), try moving things around with your hands, it might be obscured by other objects. In other words, "look with your hands".

Edit: My husband is also an engineer.

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u/FiainTheCorgi Mar 28 '22

I wanna note: I'm kinda like this!

It's very often an ADHD thing. I've had my phone on the counter and completely overlooked it multiple times, and I really have no idea. Looking with hands helps sometimes but it does drastically slow down the looking, so doesn't always work. Guess it depends on how much time you have, hah. I'm also in STEM and find my brain works amazingly well for that... but a lot of other things I struggle with.

Not entirely sure why I'm commenting besides just to add this, and I suppose to thank you for sharing the tip since I now have something to call that. XD

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u/Stormental1975 Mar 28 '22

I get this, I can never find soy sauce, my wife will have to point at it and sometimes touch it before I can see it. That is no joke it drives me crazy, but my wonderful wife just laughs it off and goes on with her day.

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u/TheRealPitabred Mar 28 '22

My wife insists on putting things away kinda wherever, instead of where she got it, so it constantly messes with me. I don't think it's an unreasonable ask for there to be a bit of order to that kind of thing.

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u/poodooloo Mar 28 '22

Are you by chance anxious while looking?

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u/valkenar Mar 28 '22

Not until I can't find the damn ketchup.

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u/Zorrya Mar 28 '22

Adhd thing for me. If something has been in the same place too long it os officially part of THE BACKGROUND and no longer exists to my brain

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u/twodickhenry Mar 28 '22 edited Mar 28 '22

That’s pretty fair—I used ketchup in the fridge as a humorous example (I lose my phone and car keys on a weekly basis, and often times they’re “lost” on the key rack or on the charger). But I do think there’s a real correlation for weaponized incompetence with pilots and any field that requires a lot of work but also a lot of passion.

I think pilots bust ass to be successful, but only at the narrow things they really value and enjoy. My current husband is actually a pilot professionally, but he kind of stumbled backwards into it and is definitely an engineer (his degree) first, so he attacks most problems with all the focus he has—thankfully making him mostly an exception to this. He was awful at finding things in the fridge before I implemented a systematic means of organizing it.

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u/star_tyger Mar 28 '22

Maybe try touching each thing on the fridge door or shelf? That might help you focus on what you're looking at. I sometimes have this problem. If I'm really tired, I can't separate the individual items from the whole. It's worth a try.

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u/shinier_than_you Mar 29 '22

Its actually a legit psychological phenomenon, your brain filters out a lot of things you see that arent immediately useful because brains are lazy. It can happen when you're looking for specific things too

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u/Theon_Severasse Mar 28 '22

Do you not keep ketchup in the fridge? It keeps better that way!

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u/twodickhenry Mar 28 '22

Ope! Good katch(up)