64 Infuriating Examples Of Weaponized Incompetence That Had People Seeing Red

Brother had my mom convinced he couldn’t load the dishwasher. So he got to unload while I had to load. I’ll never get over it.

I teach so I see this just about every single day, but the most common one and egregious in my opinion is the inability to keep track a sheet of paper for even a class period, Much less a day. Students shove it in their backpacks or leave it on the floor, and then act like it’s not their fault they don’t have their assignment to turn in.

I see people “playing dumb” at work to get out of work - acting like they were never trained, and can’t learn how to do things that are requirements of the job in healthcare setting especially.

Needing detailed instructions for chores they somehow manage perfectly when nobody else is available.

Worked on a movie, producer mentioned having to make coffee early on in his career and made engine oil type coffee. Was never asked to make coffee again.

The classic move of shrinking two nice sweaters on purpose, giving an overly dramatic apology, and saying “I guess I’m just banned from laundry forever.” Dude lived like a king for three years off that one move.

Honestly, a lot of what's called weaponized incompetence is just bad training or unclear expectations. If nobody actually shows someone how to do it right, calling it a strategy feels like a stretch.

My ex used to claim they couldn't figure out how to load the dishwasher properly every single time, even after I showed them twice. It always ended with me doing it instead, which somehow became the routine without any real discussion about it.

One of our maids pretends she doesn't understand English, to make sure she's never asked for anything.

My boss. He is lazy, checked out, burnt out, old, and has no professionalism left. The young guys do everything, including the most difficult jobs. Yet the guy still gets paid more than everyone while watching YouTube videos all day. He will retire at the end of this year, so I guess everyone is just letting him be for the remainder of the year.

coworker "couldn't figure out" the dishwasher for three years and somehow always gets out of loading it.

Yes my time to share, I was cleaning up a spill and I asked my then bf to please get me the mop pad that attaches to the head of the mop, he tried to bring me a sanitary pad.

A few old people who simply don't want to learn how a smartphone works or a computer etc.

I have an 8 and 10 year old… I witness it every day.

But if you’re talking real world, my boss is currently someone who was my boss elsewhere, I love her, she is awesome, but she plays dumb all the time and refuses to tasks that will take 5 minutes because “she doesn’t know how” when it’s a core part of our job.

I have a coworker and the busy work we gave new hires he was spectacularly bad at. Like he cause 20 different issues across the 4 months I worked with him. In my entire time working I had one issue that I fixed. Just one in two years.

We ended up not giving him any more of that.

I personally would have fired him but the manager was friends with him and refused to do so.

i used to work in production control for a manufacturing firm that had a habit of moving people who made mistakes on the shop floor into management or design so as to prevent mistakes. thus ensuring any mistakes were repeated constantly. or better yet, designs ignored by machinists who knew better.

the guy who ran the floor got his job that way.

it was always a pain to get custom work through because the floor had targets. targets that the targets had no basis in requirements. sure, they could spend an hour breaking down and setting up for the high value priority work, but then they'd get shouted at for missing an arbitrary target when instead they could spend all day spinning screws nobody needs to add to a big bucket in the warehouse.

in what i already knew was a futile gesture i stormed the floor managers office and explained that he was actively working against the company. he gave me a grin and told me he knew. he didn't set the targets. they'd be set by enthusiastic an middle manager who'd read a book on productivity and he'd given up arguing long ago. he was waiting for someone like me to go tell them what i'd told him.

I've been working hospitality for half my life and I've seen so many people take part time roles while they've been in college, sometimes doing a masters or PhD that can't follow basic instructions. I know you can't teach common sense or work ethic, but some of the stuff I've seen out of what should be intelligent people has to have been an example of this.

My social worker ex-girlfriend, with a whole master’s degree under her belt that includes loads of psychology education, telling me communication and consistency were “too hard” and that she was “sick of trying to heal and grow.”

In reality, she was a counter-transference nightmare that was emotionally, potentially physically, cheating on me with no less than two of her clients.

One of my coworkers when I worked at the library botched a children’s reading so so bad that parents complained. He smiled and told another co-worker that they won’t ask him to do it again.

Me pretending to not know how to use the dishwasher.