weaponized incompetence

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onto today’s topic: weaponized incompetence 😐️ 

i don’t get upset or mad very often, but feigning incompetence as a strategy to make me pick up others’ tasks boils my blood. i experienced this a lot in high school, especially in group projects.

let me reel it back for a second though. weaponized incompetence is when someone knowingly performs tasks poorly in order to shirk responsibilities. you might have seen this with your siblings, classmates or coworkers. i’ve also observed this a lot in those married couples’ videos on tiktok LOL. like … let be for real, you know how to unload a dishwasher. cut the bs. 😬 

i still remember this one example (although this exact scenario has occured multiple times) where i had typed out the exact content each slide needed to include and then divided up the slides for us all to complete for a group project. at this point, i was already bearing the brunt of the workload. the night before the deadline, i notice that one particular group member’s slides were still incomplete and in the exact state i left them: a blank slide with key bullet points. i even made a slide template for how the slides should look visually — all he had to do was rearrange the info and copy it. 😭 i texted my group member and all he replied with was, “i don’t know what to put on the slides.”

nah, there’s no way. 💀 i texted him back saying that all he had to do was make his 2-3 slides look presentable using the template and bullet points that i already laid out. the next morning, there was no change and we were presenting in 2 hours. my older self would have quickly done his work and presented his slides, but i was sick of this. i told him i’d leave his slides blank, and i did. he ended up being unable to present anything so we skipped his slides during the presentation. 🔇 

weaponized incompetence is a manipulation tactic that a lot of people use in workplace and academic settings. it’s up to you to know that you don’t have to stand for it or pick up the slack for others. of course, if someone is genuinely struggling it’s good to help them out. however, if it’s obvious that they’re just trying to leave the weight to you, point them towards how they can figure it out themselves.

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