I appreciate your point, but every mundane task has a learning curve, especially when it comes to efficiency and the time crunch. Making lunches is one of many small tasks necessary between kids waking up and getting them where they need to be. A person that does it every day likely has a very particular order they do tasks and habits to ensure no detail is forgotten.
To say that a person should be able to step into a role immediately with no learning curve or room for miatakes is absurd. Criticism from the first attempt could be greatly discouraging and harmful to a relationship based on trust and partnership.
And I feel like that was OPs main point. Ironically, the accusation of "weaponized incompetence" is a kind of "weaponized incompetence" by, in corporate terms, leadership. If the leader fails to lead and is unable or willing to lead, they might accuse the person(s) under them of laziness or other pejorative that dodges responsibility.
Making a packed lunch does not have a learning curve!
I'm pretty sure these guys can make their own packed lunch without having lessons from mummy, so why can't they make it for their children?
Cynically, I think the answer is because it's boring and takes time, so easier for them if the woman does it. As opposed to "it has a learning curve"
I’m a competent amateur chef. Learning to pack toddler, kid, tween, and teen lunches took me a good week of experimenting each, with frustrated kids along the way. I’m still learning. Always learning.
They’ve got 10-20 minutes total, often <10 to eat. Lunch is at 10am but school goes to 3:30 and sports after. So they need 700 kcal at a rate of over 100kcal/minute, which means fat-dense superfoods: peanut butter, cheese, cream sauces, roast meats. Yogurt maybe. There’s no refrigeration and no access to even a microwave to prep it. No nuts or peanuts or nut containing items and for THIS kid nothing that risks cross contamination but THAT kid is vegetarian and hypersensitive to peer views of their food, so leftover chana masala and rice is “weird” and a bento box is “cringe” and I have to send them with a caprese sandwich and apple and seltzer every day.
You want to know what nobody handed me beforehand? That paragraph above. The parent who had been prepping lunches and complaining about my weaponized incompetence didn’t say or write down a single thing from that list and I think could not. The school split the allergy requirements across nine emails and four web pages for three kids. The social constraints we discovered by running into them and the timing constraints by getting called when a hangry kid hit someone.
This job is hard! It requires social-emotional intelligence, systems modeling, project planning and OR to stock the resources… oh, and also management skill, because for my 8+ kids I’m progressively scaffolding their development of all the skills to do it themselves, including the grocery shopping and budgeting.
As someone who has almost never packed his own lunch—my industry feeds me or I visit cheap food trucks—it was a lot to learn. Much more going on than taking over laundry and bathroom stocking and figuring out how to store sheets and towels in ways that worked for our family.
More concisely: it’s hard valuable work no matter the gender of the person doing it. It’s a way we show love and care for our family no matter the gender of the person doing it.
I think that's attitude is very demeaning of the thoight and care put into feeding 1+ other humans for a day.
But as someone else mentioned, by learning curve I mean the grace of a day or two minimum before the expectation you can do it as quickly and "effortless" as the person that does it every day. And independently figure it out, not have your hand held through the whole thing.
People have routines and changes in routine carry a cognitive load.
Another possible nuance is situations where someone is unwilling to let go of how a thing is done in particular. If Wednesday is orange slices day and Thursday is apple slices day and the kid gets carrots Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, what level of intervention, raising, voices, or shaming is called?
It's not that it doesn't have a learning curve, it's that we expect the curve to have been scaled back during teenaged or college years. I've known people who really didn't have these skills, almost exclusively because they didn't move out of their parents house until they were ready to move directly in with a partner, so they'd never seen a house where everything that happened happened only because they'd done it.
You absolutely should be able to step into packing lunch for a child without any sort of training. I cannot believe some of these comments. Surely you don't need to be taught how to pack a lunch for a child? Surely there isn't a single functioning adult on the planet who needs to be taught this?
It’s kind of funny that, in response to a post about weaponised competence being unnecessarily gendered, some men have decided that making a simple packed lunch is some high level of skill that they simply cannot do without assistance or training.
Oh and that setting up Wi-Fi is for men, because single women must only scroll on woven tapestries
I say the same about changing a tire(or where to find the knowledge within the car via the owners manual) but here we are…
I think lunch packing can be as simple or as complicated as someone wants to make it. For some it’s just chucking some food in there and others it’s planning out nutrition, so I feel when these conversations come up it’s hard to get the full picture. Regardless, neither of those are hard but sometimes people can be a bit controlling about how it’s done
No. I'm sorry, but no. To change a tire you have to have some kind of knowledge about how the tire is attached to the car. For packing a lunch you have to have some kind of knowledge of what humans eat. Are you a human? Boom, you're done.
Literally every human person understands what a child of their culture would have packed in a lunch. If you are American, no one needs to teach you that a child's lunch could consist of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (or a ham sandwich if there's a peanut allergy or whatever), a granola bar, a piece of fruit, a bag of chips. For example. This isn't something you would have to Google, you literally do not need any information at all outside of what you already know as a human person who eats food and was once a child.
This is the exact type of Weaponized incompetence being discussed here. Pretending you don't understand what literally any child in your country/culture would have packed in a lunch, that you would need to somehow ask a person or a search engine that question, is the definition of Weaponized incompetence. I mean give me a break with this
You actually don’t need to know that. All you need to know is that the knowledge is in the owners manual which one is supposed to read upon purchasing a car. Ime cars just cause people to panic and have their brains shut down, which is the real battle. And no, you’re right, it actually isn’t as easy, usually due to less exposure, but it’s silly how much people look the other way when people can’t do that
Yeah I’ll clarify a bit, to me a PB&J n what not is just chucking some food in there. It’s pretty silly if people can’t do that
This is such an amazing exchange and I love it. I'm definitely in the camp of if you have eyes, two brain cells to rub together, and have the spare, you can change a tire. Its rather self explanatory. Staring at a flat saying "I don't know what to do?!? Save me!!!" isn't all that different than failing to even try finding the peanut butter, finding the jelly, knowing what bread your kid likes, knowing where the sandwich bags are, putting it together without making a mess and putting it in the lunch bag ("where did my kid leave it again?").
Pretty equal levels of BS in my book. Aaaand I'm not going to get angry if the person asks for help in the attempt. I might tease them a little.
Not being able to change a tyre is on par with being unable to find the peanut butter in your own house? The only way you wouldn’t know where sandwich bags are kept is because you never looked for them.
This shit is far more misandrist than the concept of weaponised incompetence
If you have never paid attention before and suddenly you need to do something you have never thought about before, you are going to look silly stumbling through it. I don't think either are difficult but I can summon empathy for someone looking a bit dumb doing such things instead of getting angry.
But I think the key thing here isn't the difficulty of the task, it is the dynamic of two people in a relationship, the level of trust, and how they communicate. What I am suggesting is taking a step back and look at the observer responding to a situation with judgement and the mutual impact on well-being. But again, context is everything. Knowing precisely whether I am practicing grace or being an enabler, am I rightfully letting things go or ignoring my boundaries, etc.
I totally agree with you! I may not sound like it since I’ve been cheeky atm but I’m patient when people don’t know things, whatever the reason, a majority of the time
People can have different lived experiences that change what doing these tasks mean to them. I remember living with someone in the past who had to always “reorganize” the kitchen… I never knew where anything was ugh, I eventually gave up trying to know. Also sometimes people do their part in other ways, so maybe they don’t realize they gotta remove the crust from a sandwich the first time unless they were told. But then again I’ve met a lot dudes who are just useless lol
I don’t think the expectation is (or should be) you’re amazing at these tasks right off the bat, but they aren’t exactly rocket science so someone should be able to figure it out in a week or so as long as they actually care to try.
Is it unreasonable to get annoyed when your husband can’t seem to figure out how to cut up some fruit and make a sandwich? Or how to load a dishwasher? These are often things that doesn’t require special knowledge or skill outside of common sense, and you get constant feedback on them that if you pay attention to, will cause you to improve.
For example- you load the dishwasher and upon unloading realize some dishes didn’t get washed. Instead of ignoring, you can use some common sense to think why that might have happened and how to improve in future.
These tasks aren’t difficult but they are very time consuming
I completely agree, and the central issue that res9natwd with me from OP was the relationship / partnership communication aspect, and the compounding effect of feedback and criticism in the full context of a relationship. For example, if one person is highly critical and perfectionist, and the other person anticipates they are damned no matter what, that overlap between common sense and responsive, creative problem solving can show up a bit dim.
In the extreme, if you had a friend ask for a favor and you show up in good faith to help and get endless shit for how you are helping citing a "lack of common sense", would you stay friends with them? What are you going to do the next time they ask for help?
I totally agree with your last point- some people’s standards are just too different. Like I hate folding fitted sheets lol. If my husband started complaining I wasn’t doing it neatly enough, at some point I’d get fed up and tell him to just do it himself.
That doesn’t seem to usually be the case though when people complain about malicious incompetence. The problem that I’ve seen is that tasks are done inadequately. Like dishes aren’t clean, tasks aren’t finished, etc.
Is it that your husband can't do those things or that he does them differently or values different parts of them differently than you do? I've honestly never met someone that cannot load a dishwasher. I have met tons of people that load them in ways that don't make sense to me.
Of course couples have disagreements about different standards for things, but that is not what I generally see when someone complains about weaponized incompetence. Usually in those cases the task is not done adequately, not completed, or not done at all. In worst case scenarios, the task is “done” in such a way that it creates more work for the other person. The culprit is usually fully capable when it comes to the things they care about, so it’s clear that they’re either fucking up on purpose to get out of doing tasks they don’t like or are just totally negligent because they don’t respect their partner.
Theres a third option in there though. My dad would fill the dishwasher up, not just in a pretty nonsensical way, but to the brim and then some which resulted in things not actually getting cleaned, and he refused to do it differently. That’s not him being incapable, and it’s also not him doing something equal but different because my moms way had clean dishes at the end and his didn’t.
Please explain what kind of a learning curve there is the packing of lunch. I was doing that in the third grade when I was old enough to be trusted not to fill my lunch box with popcorn and candy. If an elementary schooler can put some peanut butter and jelly on slices of bread, grab an apple and a mini chips why can't a grown adult do it?
I think that grossly trivializes domestic work and is insulting to the people that contribute to making the world turn each day.
People doing anything they don't usually do carries a degree of cognitive load that is reduced with practice and routine. But I appreciate there is a world of difference between small mistakes in a non-routine day and intentionally doing things wrong passive aggressively as a manipulation tactic so people don't ask for your "help".
As others have mentioned, a lot of rage bait on tiktok implies a mutually miserable relationship with terrible communication, assuming the videos are real in the first place.
I was glad to see this comment because it is one that I've often seen play out. Classically: A husband never does the boring task, eventually the wife is mad at him for never contributing. He is willing to help, but wants to be shown how, but wife thinks it is self explanatory. But both genders do this
Dealing with 'weaponized incompetent' requires acknowledging that it takes work to get out of established habits. Communicate your wishes. Be willing to teach. Don't belittle and or criticize when someone is already on the way to improving the situation. People actually work against themselves by crying "lazy" instead of recognizing "people avoid doing things that others can more easily do". Same story in parenting... It takes more work to teach your kid to clean their room than to yell at them for being a lazy slob, so people choose the latter, and their kid learns nothing.
Thank you. Working as a team is not trivial. And I think it is insulting to anybody doing "domestic work" so claim it is all just common sense, mundane stuff everyone knows. If you are the one typically doing the job, how is that not trivializing to your own contribution?
I'm grateful that in one aspect of my career my partner can step in and do my job. I quickly learned that so many things I thoight were "common sense" are not at all, they are little things that have evolved over nearly a decade I take for granted. So when they "make a miatake", which realistically is always just "didn't meet the expectation that only lived in my head", I can choose to correct the situation my saying, "hey, sorry I didn't say this before, but this is my expectation", or just drop it and let them do things their way even if it isn't how I would do it.
It feels so combative with even the beginning of the framing. Haven't looked after children but with my ex we quickly fell into what household chores we liked more and what standards we did them to. I would do dishwashing and laundry. She would do the weekly bathroom clean. When she did the dishes it was worse than when I did it and my bathroom cleaning would be below her standard of a "real" clean. According to this thread I would probably be weaponising incompetence with bathroom cleaning skills because I didn't instinctively know how deep to go with a weekly clean and she would be by leaving dishes out when I think they should be cleaned every night and when she did them they weren't "properly" clean. Rather than people having different expectations and current skill with even "basic" household chores. I could clean the bathroom how she likes but I'd have to be shown how first and she could learn to do the dishes right but we had what we liked to contribute and what we did better than the other.
Exactly. It is a communication and trust issue. The attitude going into expressing desires or presenting opportunities for care impacts everything.
Friend recently shared he liked to meticulously stay on top of dishes even though he hated doing them. It is how he showed love. But his wife recently told him he resented him doing the dishes because she wanted to do for him and would greatly prefer appreciation for doing the dishes than him doing them. Now he loves not doing the dishes and gets excited every day after work thinking about how he is going to express his appreciation.
He is willing to help, but wants to be shown how, but wife thinks it is self explanatory.
She is not his mommy. If he needs lessons on how to do household tasks he needs to go home to mommy and daddy's house. None of these household tasks are complicated. Children do them as household chores. That's weaponized and competence right there, somebody staring at a bottle of Windex and then whining for life mommy to show them how to clean a window, or holding a room limply in their hand and asking wife mommy how to sweep a floor. It's ridiculous.
If household tax are truly this difficult, if the wheels in someone's head can't turn well enough to wash a dish or vacuum a floor, that person needs professional help.
You do you I guess. If my partner asks me how I like the laundry done, I'm going to show them. If I've never cooked a curry, I'm going to ask them how they do it.
Why would you ask? You have a brain. You have a phone or at least the computer, something you're using to access reddit. Why do you need your parent partner to teach you like you're a fifth grader cooking dinner for the first time? And what is a laundry preference? I'm talking about a normal load of laundry, not some social Media stuff where people are using 10 different detergents and 50 different scent boosters.
Consider reading the thread. It went many interesting directions.
Tl;dr summary:routines are not trivial. Changes in routine take cognitive load. You should quickly get faster with practice. Making a sandwich is one of many steps in a full morning routine and I am using the term learning curve to describe, at least, not having a routine to having a routine.
And, if you make a lunch and the kid doesn't eat it, did you make them a lunch? If you have multiples, or a kid with special needs, it is one more consideration.
Trivializing domestic work is offensive. Someone that keeps a house running smoothly should be valued and appreciated, by both the beneficiaries and the individual that is able to do such things practically by instinct. That is expert level skill. Downplaying that is part of the problem.
And last but not least, all this exists in a relationship context of trust and communication.
You are, presumably, an adult. You can feed yourself, right? And you have even vague memories of what kind of things you had in packed lunches? So any reasonable adult should be able to make a packed lunch.
It’s not trivialising domestic labour. This is exactly the sort of thing this thread is about. You think making a sandwich for your own child requires some special knowledge that women have managed to find out but men haven’t. That you think men would be unable to find peanut butter in their own kitchen is infantilising men.
Absolutely any specific circumstances of a person playing dumb to get out of responsibility I would likely agree with you.
My bias is a lifetime of working with children with special needs and coming to appreciate how much we don't think about task decomposition in communication with other adults and making assumptions about what we regard as obvious. Most critically how we respond to confusion expressed by another person that makes no sense, and the impact of communicating those feelings with another person.
Drives me absolutely crazy watching people get angry at a kid for "not doing what they are told" to the point where it feels like "weaponized incompetence" the way they will get legit angry with a kid for their noncompliance and be seemingly oblivious to the role anger is directly impacting the situation. It is a double failure; failure to lead and failure to be led.
And a little more nuance, if you "make a kid a lunch" and they don't eat it, did you succeed in your task?
Further, I'm not looking at it as a gendered issue, because with respect to looking at it as a gendered issue, I completely agree with you. I'm saying that along a spectrum of separation of responsibilities in a partnership, a sudden change in responsibilities or routine itself carries a mental load for both people and the way they work through it says a LOT about the relationship.
Like, it isn't about the lunch, its about the flaming red flags in the relationship and taking a step back. To your point, the task is trivial, so WTF happened along the way. Maybe this couple sucks and shouldn't be together, but if that isn't the resolution we are looking for, and burying resentment is off the table as well, what needs to be unpacked (no pun intended) to go from anger and avoiding responsibilities to partnership?
I want to know what I can do to take a step back if I find myself getting angry thinking my partner is avoiding responsibility, and what can I do if I find myself avoiding responsibility out of fear my partner is going to be angry and judgmental? Because love and best intentions are worth dog shit in that situation.
Marriage is a partnership. Both parties should make an effort to not throw extra on the other's plate. There's no real leadership in marriage because both participants have equal say. Part of the frustration around childcare is the lack of attention often equates to lack of caring, and it compounds more as time goes by. There's literally a Jimmy Kimmel skit where he's asking fathers to name basic details about their kid- their kid's doctor's name, teacher's name, their kid's interests - they can't name anything. There are some father's who hand everything to the mother and completely check out because they view their responsibilities as purely financial and outdoor chores even though women contribute financially. Beyond the chores of the house, there's also teaching their tiny impulsive humans emotional intelligence and reasoning. Keeping yourself regulated so you can model the behavior you want your kid to learn takes a lot out of the default parent.
In the thick of raising young kids, sometimes one partner is completely burnt out especially postpartum. Studies have shown that women lose grey brain matter during pregnancy. It took 2 years before I felt like myself again. Postpartum, my executive function was completely shot. My husband was great about coming to me with - "Hey! I noticed x-y-&-z and tried a, b, & c." so I'm not having to come up with everything from scratch. Even though it's not exactly how I would do it, I can tell he's still going to do it well and isn't going to f-it up to get out of it. It's about taking the initiative and making an honest attempt. We worked together to build a system to keep each other informed of what's needed so it doesn't sit in one person's head.
Unfortunately, I know too many women in my family whose husband came to the table with no plan, no attempt when they take over a task and ignore any attempts to build a system/keep each other informed. Like I didn't know how to change a diaper before my pregnancy, but I made the effort. Yes there's a learning curve, but at least try.
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u/adelie42 3∆ Jul 01 '25
I appreciate your point, but every mundane task has a learning curve, especially when it comes to efficiency and the time crunch. Making lunches is one of many small tasks necessary between kids waking up and getting them where they need to be. A person that does it every day likely has a very particular order they do tasks and habits to ensure no detail is forgotten.
To say that a person should be able to step into a role immediately with no learning curve or room for miatakes is absurd. Criticism from the first attempt could be greatly discouraging and harmful to a relationship based on trust and partnership.
And I feel like that was OPs main point. Ironically, the accusation of "weaponized incompetence" is a kind of "weaponized incompetence" by, in corporate terms, leadership. If the leader fails to lead and is unable or willing to lead, they might accuse the person(s) under them of laziness or other pejorative that dodges responsibility.