What’s the worst example of weaponised incompetence you’ve ever seen? – 17 people who have made the most of being useless

‘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.’
-ConfidentDiffidence

‘My stepdad. He’s never done a damn thing around the house his entire life. My mom always did it for him. She died 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’
-Silaquix

‘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.’
-SpezDemandsUsernames

‘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.’
-drunkbettie

‘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.’
-1031BRZRKR

‘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 deadass 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’
-somestarvingartist

‘My ex’s 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.’
-LadyMGrantham

‘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.’
-reverandglass

‘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”’
-MrDuck5446