Weaponized Incompetence

Please don't mistake this for a male-bashing post. Men, women, and people who identify as non-binary are all capable of this.

Weaponized incompetence is when you don't like doing a certain task, so you deliberately mess it up, badly and repeatedly. You know that eventually your parter or roommate or family member will get frustrated and give up and do it themselves instead of asking you to pitch in. Ka-BAM!! You win! Now you'll never be asked to put away the laundry / wash the car / go to the grocery store / watch the kids / cook dinner / whatever, ever again. My experience has been with men doing this to women, but as I say, I'm well aware that's not the only way it happens.

I have seen people:

1.) Happily agree to cook dinner, but suddenly forget how to multitask, even though they can do so quite well at their job. They don't start the side dishes until the main course is done, and then they cook one dish at a time. First the meat, then the potatoes, then the vegetable, then the salad, then the dessert. Not only is dinner going to be very late, but most of it is cold before it's on the table. By the way, they've dirtied every dish in the kitchen in the process, and it's of course a sheer coincidence that you agreed to do the dishes if they'd cook. Don't like the way they did it? Cook dinner yourself next time, then. Which, of course, was their goal and the reason for doing it this way.
2.) Use bleach on colors, and/or throw colors in with whites and then wash it in hot water. Oops, the clothes got ruined. Sorry about your favorite dress, love. Please don't be mad at me. I guess I'm just not good at laundry. You'd better do it yourself from now on.
3.) Send a child to school in a dirty, wrinkled outfit, hair unbrushed, with whatever they ate for breakfast still all over their faces. Plus they're tired because they stayed up too late last night, watching a movie on TV that wasn't kid-friendly and gave them nightmares. Just not good at watching the kids, I suppose. You'd better do that yourself from now on.
4.) Ruin an expensive vacuum cleaner trying to pick up toys and socks with it, and an electric skillet trying to wash it in the dishwasher.
5.) Have to be told, EVERY SINGLE TIME, how to use the washer, dryer, dishwasher, and vacuum cleaner. Let the bathroom fixtures get grungy beyond belief because they "don't know" what product to use that will clean it.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

With my husband, after fifteen years of marriage he still doesn't know a dress from a nightgown, or pants (slacks) from leggings. If I have a sprained wrist, or can't do the laundry myself for any other reason, this makes a difference. We don't have a lot of closet space. I fold leggings and put them in a drawer, and my nightgowns go on hooks. Dresses and pants/slacks are put on hangers. We have had conversation after conversation about this, and yet repeatedly I find my night gowns and my leggings on hangers. Even though when I bought my newest night gowns, I pulled them out of the package in front of him, and explicitly told him they were night gowns, not dresses.

Just two weeks ago I held a dress up next to a gown and pointed out that the dress has buttons and a waistline, while the gown is shapeless and made of thinner fabric. Today he STILL thought that very same dress was a gown. It was as if the conversation two weeks ago didn't even happen.

I don't understand why he still doesn't get it. After all this time, I'm convinced it's another case of weaponized incompetence, that if he keeps messing it up often enough, I'll give up on asking him to put the laundry away, and just do it myself. And I am so sick and tired of that game. I don't ever want to have the "this is a dress, this is a gown, these are pants, these are leggings" conversation with him again. He can instantly spot the difference between a '73 Chevy and a '75 Ford. He grasps the concept of categories. If after fifteen years, and hundreds of conversations, I'm still having to tell him the difference between gowns and dresses, then he just doesn't care. He's not stupid. He *can* learn. He just doesn't want to.