64 Infuriating Examples Of Weaponized Incompetence That Had People Seeing Red

One of the guys who trained me when I started my job told me "If you do things wrong enough, they stop asking you to do them."

He retires next month, and even as the senior member of our department, he has the LEAST amount of responsibility. He went an entire 20 year career on this ethos, and it worked beautifully for him.

I work with a lot of lawyers. I had a legal assistant once who'd been at the same firm for 14 years. She knew exactly how to file and organize and sort things, she knew exactly where every piece of paper was, and she knew exactly where every email was... For the law firm's owner. When it came time to help other people, she suddenly had no idea. Couldn't file a document. "Can you show me how to submit it to the court?" but every single time. Lawyers would train her on stuff over and over and over (by doing it themselves while she watched). One time she had to do it independently and she messed it up and got the attorney yelled at by a judge--forgot to serve the opposing side, whoops. Won't say it was on purpose but it sure didn't seem to happen when the owner would ask her to file things. But the firm's founder saw her as a godsend because she suddenly knew how to do things the second he asked her.

My stepdad. He's never done a darn thing around the house his entire life. My mom always did it for him. She passed suddenly and he didn't know where anything was, how to pay a bill or take care of himself. We were trying to sort through paperwork and he just sat there.

He and my brother told me, that I ( the only woman) needed to step up and take care of him. Mind you this is a perfectly normal 62yr old man that still works a full time job. I said no so I was immediately iced out and my stepdad married a lady from his church asap.

My exs chore was unloading the dishwasher. He made it a point to drop and break dishes that were sentimental to me and said he was just too clumsy and maybe I should do it if I didn’t want my things to get broken.

My dad is your standard technologically-inept boomer, but flat out refuses to be taught how to do things. Will walk away, cut you off, or plug his ears if you try to explain something to him.

"I don't need to learn how to log in to Netflix. That's what you're for!"... bruh.

My ex-husband.

Our son was a year old. I did the bedtime routine; he was supposed to pick up the living room and tidy up. Somehow, in his head, this meant only picking up the toys on the floor.

One night, after I had gotten our son to sleep, I told my ex husband that picking up means clearing the tables and loading the dishwasher as well, and that when I ask him to clean up, I need everything cleaned up.

His answer was, "But I need you to tell me what to do". I told him, you own eyes, use them to see what needs to be cleaned up.

He repeated "but I need you to tell me what to do" every time I mentioned that he can see that the tables were cluttered, theres dishes in the sink, etc

We divorced a year later, initated by me.

I was helping some friends, a couple, move. He grabbed an armful of clothes and just dropped them into an open suitcase on the floor. Obviously it made a mess, and obviously he'd be able to fit more if he folded the clothes neatly. When his girlfriend called him out he told her she should pack his clothes because she's better at it.

Worked in a team environment with a lady that seemed to have the IQ of a daffodil.

We would take all of the work from her so our team could finish projects on-time.

One day in the elevator she says “can I ask you a question? People think I’m dumb don’t they?”

Of course I replied “well not exactly”, she cut me off and said, “I’m not dumb, I just act like that so yall do all of my work”.

My coworker insisted he couldn't format Word documents because he's a 'visual person.' He was a graphic designer.

If I was gone for the day doing something fun without my ex husband, he wouldnt eat all day and then flip out when I got home that he was starving. Yes, a grown man would refuse to feed himself, make it my fault and ruin my day.

A coworker hated the company, so he pored over the safety manual. The day OSHA showed up, the company was written up because of his behavior. When the company confronted him, he claimed he was following the safety handbook to the letter. It said to wear hardhats at all times. It didn't say on which body part hardhats should be worn. Therefore he was completely compliant in strapping his hardhat to his knee.

my old coworker would mess up even the simplest tasks whenever asked to help. eventually, everyone just stopped asking him. he basically trained everyone to leave him alone.

My friend's husband. They have three boys between 3-12, oldest is on the spectrum. Whenever he (the husband) has to watch the kids, he'll purposefully start arguments/fights with them so he can get away with sending them to their rooms and not parenting.

My friend doesn't get out much. Last time I convinced her to do a thrifting and lunch outing, he called seven times in two hours.

My mom (46) talks like a baby when she wants you to do things, only does it when she wants something done and then says “she can’t figure it out” or she doesn’t know how to do it, throws a fit or goes silent when you refuse to do it for her til someone feels sorry for her and does it for her.

My aunt lives in Quebec, and has long since retired from her lifer career at an airport.

She does not, cannot, and will not speak a lick of French.

I’m in awe of her, really.

I work in an IT call center. We have one kid on the team who genuinely walks the line between weaponized incompetence and just being a moron.

Guy spent 5 hours of his shift with his headset mic being messed up. He would answer every call, the callers would be unable to hear him and hang up, and he'd continue on like nothing was wrong.

Whenever he'd get a complicated issue, he'd talk staff into rebooting server stacks (the phones at the sites we support are VOIP) so the calls would drop and someone else would get his mess.

I had an amazing boss. Then one day, he announced his retirement.

The jerk who replaced him was on another level of jerkness entirely.

He wanted to get rid of all of us, and replace us with people he hand picked. In my case he had me train my replacement before dropping the hammer, and pretended it was just a "backup".

Not being stupid, I knew exactly what was going on.

So, I trained my replacement alright. I made sure I trained him so well that after I eventually quit they asked me to come back. Which I didn't.

I’m gonna pick on my partner with love.

I asked him to please clean the bathroom, and we go back and forth because I wouldn’t feel like its clean cause there would still be lots of hair and water stains on the counter, the toilet would have spots on it, etc. and I’d point these out, he’d listen, try again and same thing.

He said one time “I clean the bathroom the way I’m used to, if you need me to do it to your standards you gotta tell me”
“I get where you’re coming from, but I’m bringing my standards down to what I think is a reasonable level, not asking you to meet them. Why do i need to ask you to do it to a standard level?”
“Well you don’t, I just…”

And then he took a minute before admitting he may have been putting bare minimum effort in without even realizing it.

I had a colleague, probably in his 50s, acting like he'd never used a computer mouse before. He was so insistent that he'd never used one, didn't know how to hold it, couldn't link his movement to the movement of the cursor, that I passed him off on the manager.
Told the boss, I wasn't able to get through to him and he needed to see for himself.

My brother in law for just about everything that isn't his day job. When it comes to anything he likes or wants to do he's somehow an expert at it who gives it his all, but when it's a household chore or just basic life skill it's "oh well you're so much better at it than I am so I figured I'd ask you." You try and tell him that you'd like to teach him for next time and he throws a fit, a 25 year old grown man. It's ridiculous.