wish customer service jobs operated w video game standards, so a customer would come up to me and i’d say “greetings traveler! looking to trade?” and they’d only had 4 options for their response
i’d just stand there wiping down the same part of the counter for 8 hours until my shift ended and then id drop everything and walk away and if you tried to interact with me i’d just keep running into you silently until you moved
Our society has a number of loveable buffoons who fool around and are excused from acting like prats because they’re funny. They might be rubbish at most things but as long as their banter is flowing, we put up with it.
These types are almost exclusively men. You don’t get hilarious, idiotic women being lorded as icons of our culture. Diane Abbott is dismissed as a cretin while Boris Johnson is a joker.
Which begs the question: is conscious male incompetence a form of misogyny?
If you labour the point that you can’t cook, then chances are that you won’t be made to cook. If you make a hash out of doing the laundry or hoovering, you’re forcing someone else to take over.
Few have the patience to watch someone do a job badly over and over again and so often, they’ll just take it upon themselves to do your chores as well as their own. Emotional labour is doubled when you’ve got an incompetent clown on your hands.
I was recently listening Semi Circles, a BBC radio comedy starring Paula Wilcox, first broadcast in 1989.
It’s about a housewife who recently wakes up to the fact that she’s spent the past eight years being a slave to her kids and nice-but-emotionally-dim husband.
Part of this awakening is the realisation that she does all the housework because her husband is crap at it. Left alone, he makes inedible food. He lets the kids stay up well beyond their bedtime. He leaves the house a tip.
He doesn’t even try to do a good job because he fears that if he’s too good at these jobs, his wife will make him do more of them.
Put these garbage men in the garbage where they belong.
I went and checked the original source and it’s worse. While most of the comments get the problem (the lying, not the eggs) some of them just cannot see that this shit is actually a big honking warning sign for bigger shit. A loving person is not capable of doing this.
He literally puts his mere convenience over her actual well being. This guy thought up and executed a plan where she has to do *all* the work (because of course it wasn’t just this one specific thing) while he watches her tire herself out from the sidelines. Imagine this going on for *years*. …now imagine this with kids. You think this guy cares if she gets off during sex? Would he take care of her if she were to get sick? Would he ever lift a finger if he could get away not doing it?
She can’t trust a word he says and he doesn’t give a shit about her needs. It’s not about the *eggs*.
Sorry to reblog from you, stranger, but this commentary is all very good. I especially appreciate the emphasized statement that “a loving person is not capable of doing this.” That line is going to rattle around my brain for ages — the words feel good in my mouth. How you’ve said it is just so right.
I want to add some of OP’s further comments on the thread she made:
“To be fair, I have pretty high standards for cleanliness and his idea of clean vastly differs from mine and honestly, that’s okay! But now I’m starting to seriously wonder if he sabotaged cleaning, too, just to get me to do it. Dishes, for instance. He will wash half and leave a nasty sink full of the rest, claiming he’ll do them later. This drives me nuts, so I just do them. Often he will leave crusted on shit on then, too, so okay, I’ll just do them, right? Now because of the egg business, I’m seeing it as malicious.”
→ The husband is lazy. He seemingly commits to housework, only to bail partway through, and doesn’t even put in the effort required to do the job right in the first place.
“Yes, he sucks at dishes and laundry to the point he is banned from doing them. He will leave clothes in the washer overnight and doesnt separate anything to the point I’ve had many white clothes ruined. My favorite white brassiere is now pink due to his bullshit.”
→ The husband is inconsiderate of his wife’s property, even that which is well-loved. Could his repeated failure to learn how to do this task have been a ruse? Did he anticipate his banishment from laundry duty? OP now has to genuinely wonder about this.
“I’m starting to think he does things wrong on purpose now just to get me to do it. Another example! My car. For a while my driver side door wouldn’t open from the outside, so I had to crawl through the passenger side. He ordered a handle and kept putting it off for WEEKS. Finally, he says his hands are too big to do it, so I had to do it.”
→ The husband makes excuses for himself that cast him as an unwitting victim to fate, with the implication that he would totally do [action], if only he could. He distances himself from any possibility of blame.
Obviously, anonymous forum posts are taken with a grain of salt — we, as readers, will never know for sure if OP is real. That’s not a concern for me, though. Like I don’t care. The fact is that if one assumes this is all true, it is very obvious that the poster’s husband is a perfect example of maliciously feigned incompetence. He’s manipulative and lazy to the point of cruelty, expecting his wife to work while he fails to lift a single functioning finger. The statement that “he likes her eggs better” isn’t cute like some have stated in the replies to this post; it’s just another excuse that walls him off from criticism, a bullshit reason he pulled out of his ass to make her feel guilty and unreasonable for being upset.
The absurdity of the situation when taken at face value — lying about eggs, getting mad about making eggs, even just the reality of deviled eggs (an inherently silly prep style) being someone’s favorite food — extends an air of the absurd to the wife’s concerns, and to others’ warnings. I have noticed several comments to the tune of, “These people are all mad about eggs? What a joke! How oversensitive. That’s just how men are; this is just what marriage looks like.”
It’s fucked up, is what it is.
…deviled egg lady, if you’re truly out there somewhere, I hope you told your husband to make his own goddamn eggs from now on. It’s literally the least he can do.
When I was angry about this people reblogged from me to say it was no big deal and saying that it’s not as bad as I was making it sound and that he was actually just complimenting her and everyone takes things too seriously…this is what you need to read.
Actions show you the mind of the person who decided to act on them. His actions told her that he was capable of lying to and manipulating her for his own benefit. That is never healthy. It’s a sense of entitlement that can only be achieved when he doesn’t view her as having equal value as him, that her labour can be exploited to compensate for his lack of contribution.
It will never be the only time he is manipulative, that’s a place you can only get to when manipulation is very common and easy for you, you don’t even consciously realise that anymore.
It’s more than an abuse red flag, it’s abusive on its own.
^^^^^
this here is how we get “Crazy Ex-Girlfriends”.
Things like, “She divorced him over deviled eggs, she’s out of her mind!”
Women who are smart enough to read the signs are punished with a social death by defamation. Curiously enough, there are no “Crazy Ex-Boyfriends”, there only are “benevolent incompetent men” and women are expected to put up with them
Emergencies really
do crop up more often for poor people. Necessities, like vacuum cleaners
or phones or bedding or shoes, need replacement or repair more often
when you only buy the cheapest possible option.
Poor people’s
health tends to be compromised by cheap, unhealthy food; stress; being
around lots of similarly-poor contagious sick people who can’t afford to
stay home or get treatment; inadequate healthcare; and often, hazardous
and/or demanding work conditions – including longer hours allowing
less time for sleep, home food prep, and mental or physical exercise.
Our
homes may not offer much respite, as we’re less likely to have
comfortable furniture for sleep or relaxation, more likely to be forced
to rely on abusive people for financial reasons. We’re also more
likely to live in high-pollution areas, food deserts, and in
poorly-maintained rental housing. We’re less likely to have access to
heat or cooling even in dangerous weather.
For all these
reasons and more, we get sick more, and when we do, we have less access
to medical care – even the poor people lucky enough to have adequate
insurance and a doctor who will provide appropriate care without discrimination may face significant difficulties getting to and from a doctor
and pharmacy.
Poor people have less reliable transportation; any cars
that are affordable for a poor person will usually need major repairs at
least a couple times a year – more emergencies! – and poor people are less likely to live
anywhere near an adequate public transit system. Just the cab fare to
and from a doctor visit can easily cost a week’s worth of groceries or
more.
Ignoring medical needs as long as possible and not accessing preventative care causes massive future expense.
Many people are
poor specifically because of disability, making work difficult or
impossible in addition to the expenses of managing chronic illness,
accessing mobility aids, or other costs associated with disability.
Poverty
runs in families, and friend groups are often based heavily on class in
our stratified society, so in addition to your own emergencies as a
poor person, you’ll likely also be sharing resources to keep your loved
ones alive. You’re not likely to have wealthier friends or family who
can or will help.
Poor people are less likely to have enough
clothing that we can wait to replace unwearable items. Because our
clothing collections are smaller (and often secondhand and/or poorly made),
our clothes wear out faster. Not having clothing that marks us as
‘respectable’ can bar us from employment, make us more vulnerable to
violence from police or other harassers, and make resources like social
programmes less accessible.
Overdraft fees target poor people specifically. Being a few pennies off in your maths can mean sudden huge bills that compound themselves. Predatory banks routinely run all charges before
processing the deposits you make earlier in the day or week, which can mean huge overdraft fees can happen even if you deposit your money hours or days before trying to spend any of it.
There are thousands of examples. For poor people, unexpected expenses happen more often. And when you’re
poor, any unexpected expense can be an emergency with serious consequences.
Even the cheapest (most temporary) solution for an emergency often
breaks the bank. People who
aren’t poor don’t realize that an urgent expense of thirty dollars can
mean not eating for a week. Poor people who try to save find our savings
slipping away as emergency after emergency happens. Some poor people turn to predatory lending companies, not because they don’t know it’s a bad deal but because being hugely in debt tomorrow is better than your kids starving today.
I don’t think
people who’ve never been poor realise what it’s like. It’s not that
we’re terrible at budgeting, it’s that even the most perfect budget
breaks under the weight of the basic maths: we do not have enough
resources.
One of the more profound things I’ve heard recently came from a Mr. Rogers documentary. In a clip from his show, Mr. Rogers had just visited with a musician, and tells his audience that some people play music, and some people don’t, and that’s okay.
And then he said, “The important thing is to find something you feel good about doing.”
That phrasing struck me. “Something you feel good about doing”. Most people would have phrased it as “something you enjoy doing”. Or “something you’re good at doing”. But Mr. Rogers’ subtly different phrasing leads to a profoundly different connotation. “Something you feel good about doing” may not be enjoyable–people who work in hospitals or in disaster zones might not enjoy much of their day, but they probably feel good about helping people. “Something you feel good about doing“ may not be something you’re particularly good at–you may be a terrible artist by any objective standard, but if you feel good about making your art, then it’s a worthwhile endeavor. Looking for “something you feel good about doing” can help you find a truly satisfying life path.
That phrase is also helpful with daily decision-making. Too often, I can make choices based on “what feels good.” I put aside tasks that are too stressful or avoid activities that seem too difficult, in favor of mindlessly browsing the internet. And I enjoy myself. I feel good while I’m doing that. But at the end of the day, I don’t feel good about how I spent my time. However, reminding myself to do “something I feel good about doing” can motivate me to accomplish those more difficult tasks. It can push me to do something outside of my comfort zone, to try something new that I might not be much good at. And maybe this is a blindingly obvious philosophy to everyone else. But I’m grateful for the reminder.
Thoughtfulfangirling 