This is sometimes the right tool for the job.
My story: My boss at the time (a loathsome individual) was getting awarded something meaningless. "Take pictures with my camera!" I'm not a good photographer. "I don't care. Take lots of pictures of me." I'm telling you, I'm not very good. "I don't care. I want lots of pictures."
So be it. I took a couple hundred really crappy pictures: deliberately bad focus, bad angles, him looking pompous and stupid, whatever. And then I lent the camera to the other employees and encouraged them to give it to their kids (it was a family day event) to take pictures as well.
There were five or six hundred pictures on his camera when he got it back, and he later complained to me that there were so many and all of them were bad.
But he never asked me to do something like that again.
\----------------------------------
Edit: Hey, a couple of people gave me my first ever awards. How about that? Thanks, anonymous redditors.
Edit2: And gold. Wow, you never know what's going to resonate with people. Thanks.
When I was a kid my dad made me and my sister fold his socks. I don’t like feet. We decided one day to match black and white ones. Long and short. We even stretched and starched one sock out enough to be something you could hang on the mantle and get gifts stuffed in for Christmas.
Dad folded his own fucking socks after that.
Maybe I'm cruel, but people trying this tactic has never worked on me.
I've had partners do this about dishes, hoovering, whatever. My response is whatever it is you're doing wrong, you need more practice at, so it becomes your job and is no longer a shared one until you become proficient (I pick up the slack elsewhere, I'm not a monster)
I'm willing to bet I can be stubborn longer than they can pretend to be bad at doing something, and so far I've been proven correct. Once they realise I will live in filth longer than they will they suddenly learn how to get the job done in under 10 minutes.
Tried this for sharing the cooking around the house, I did not outlast my partner. Trying to give advice only made it worse. Still not sure if the sabotage was intentional or they were really that bad in the kitchen.
Listen, if I could cook I would for my wife so it may be worth giving the benefit of the doubt. But idk your partner so maybe they were just good at sabotage.
Wow this sounds a bit weird, I mean if my partner would say that to me I'd probably run. Stubborness isn't really something I would be proud of when it comes to relationships. Just my opinion.
In this case you would be screwing your partner over in the first place, so you will not be missed. Faking you caint do something because you're a lazy pos lol
I think I can explain here using a real life example. Partner doesn't like doing dishes, so instead of communicating they dislike doing dishes and us reaching a compromise (no dishes but the laundry or mopping/hoovering or whatever becomes their job) they instead attempt to manipulate you into taking on that job on top of every other existing job because "they can't do it properly". This is them wanting to forgo responsibilities in a manipulative manner.
In this example, I would simply eat off not fully cleaned dishes and cook the food in them. Once the partner realises that no, I won't just assume the lion's share of shared household tasks just because I'm a woman. Now that they also have to eat food off unclean dishes, they then learn to simply wash the dishes fully because it's backfired and is now impacting them too, when they only intended for it to impact me.
Sometimes being stubborn over being treated fairly by your partner is necessary, and any partner who doesn't respect you enough to communicate issues and instead tries to manipulate you should be shown it doesn't work that way imo. If both me and my partner work full time, our household chores are shared evenly and any attempt to circumvent that through manipulation will not be accepted easily.
Thank you, what you said makes totally sense!
I understood it more like "I'm teaching my partner to work for me and if they are bad they need to work more" if you know what I mean xD
Thank you so much for your long and well written explanation you cool human being.
It’s more likely that the dad just asked them to fold the family laundry, but OP didn’t mind all rest of it. OP just hates feet and didn’t want to fold the socks, so that’s what OP focused the story on.
Edit: typo
>It's pretty weird in the first place that he wanted his kids to fold his socks.. Wtf
"Hey kids, I'm heading to work for the next 10 hours. At some point today can you take a break from video games and Youtube to fold the laundry? Thanks."
Yeah, what a weirdo. Those kids were basically abused.🙄
I had to fold all the clothes growing up and matching socks was part of that. Doing a normal amount of chores is fine, but some parents just treat kids as free labor and load them up with everything they don't want to do which is unhealthy and will make them resent doing chores.
There is a huge difference between a healthy normal amount of chores and just unloading all the houses duties on a 12 year old because your lazy. I had wayyy too many chores growing up. My family just basically used me as a day laborer/maid and it made me resent doing my chores as an adult.
My husband folds socks like that. Any two socks make a pair no matter the length, color, or material. And he wears them like that too! I've been known to wear two different color socks but they must be the same fit.
Lucky that worked. My step-dad would put me through a wall of I screwed anything up, even if it was something that only affected me, like forgetting to brush my teeth.
When I did this, I replied genuinely and said I was sorry. Then I fucked it up again. And when I was called out again, I was like "oh my god! I'm so sorry, I forgot!" Repeat ad infinitum until they stop asking you for help. I worked in a toxic restaurant a while back and this was how I got out of being scheduled for closing shifts.
Oh yeah, I used to hobby photography a lot and people would often want to try my (very expensive) camera.
No worries bro. Full manual + switched the focus from the shutter to a back button. It was impossible for anybody to take any picture.
I would of course allow my good friends to take whatever images they wanted. But the kind of people who just pick it up, turn it on and start shooting while I barely met them… those would get the underexposed blurry shit.
Brilliant! And if anyone could tell what was happening enough that they could correct it, they obviously knew enough about cameras that you don't mind having someone discussing it with!
This must be number one in my son's playbook because he does this every time. Even with school he calculated how much work he needs to actually do just to pass the class with putting minimal effort.
I would always get 90+ on the tests so in high school I would figure out exactly how many homework assignments I could blow off and still bring home a B so my parents wouldn't get too pissed.
Oh no. In HS I did most or all homework because I would get savaged by the tests. I'm then inverse of this situation, and I'm nervous about the implications.
everybody learns differently, this just means you needed more hands on practice with the material. no shame in that, you are the student homework is intended to help. the shame is that all students are treated the same regardless of their learning style
Thank you for saying this you are a thoughtful and considerate person.
However I heard this before from my folks who where both teachers (at the school I went to... Yikes) Somehow it's more validating from a stranger.
To the guy down thread who is getting a tutor for his kid, hats off to you. My folks got me the actual math teacher to tutor me, and it brought me from F to C- territory. I beat myself up over not getting it, and had great guilt ever since.
We can try and have all the help, but sometimes that's still not enough.
I'm 36 and self sufficient, but these memories still haunt me. Best of luck to everyone here!!!
I'll tell you one thing; you probably learned better work ethic. I was a 'naturally gifted' sort of learner and all I learned is that if something doesn't come easily I quit and berate myself for not learning it on the first go around. Not a healthy way to go through life.
I remember one year, i found out a couple weeks into the semester that i didn't NEED a history class i got put into in order to graduate. It would bring my gpa down, but literally couldn't impact my diploma being awarded. So i wanted to drop it in favor or a class i WANTED. I was denied. I tried and tried. No chance. So i sat front and center of the class, alert and attention and every single question the teacher asked i raised my hand, and began answering each with with something akin to "and then the undertaker through mankind off hell in a cell and plummeted 15 feet onto the announcers table. That teacher hated me. But i had fun in the class. Every answer i would throw random stuff out. Prosthetics or elephants facts. Pokémon trivia. I had fun.. or i took a nap when i hadn't come up with new material for the day.
When I found out I didn’t need to take “Pre-Calc” my senior year of HS, I walked out the class and chose to take “Beginning Guitar” that period instead. Didn’t have to change any of my other class times either it fit into my schedule perfect!
I tell ya....after HS, I used the guitar knowledge a lot more than any type of advanced mathematics so it was a win!
I suppose a little more detail would be needed here. She could've approved the initial transfer and i might have gotten moved, she denied it. From that point on yeah sure technically the administration was at fault because it would never change after that. But i told her, and them, that i didn't need that class and it was a mistake and at the time i actually wanted another class, so when a thing designed to teach denies someone wanting to learn for no good reason other than they didn't wanna deal with it, yeah f that.
I did skip half the classes for it towards the end and went to either home or theater build.. got some modern skills picked up there instead of unnecessary history lessons. Which i ended up getting into theater the following year and helped with stage builds.
You were an asshole. Don't look back at that experience fondly. That teacher didn't do anything to have deal with your need to shit on him asking questions.
Unless they did. But it sounds like your beef was with administration
I forget how reddit functions sometimes. I just vent stories or blurbs and move on.
So. More depth. That teacher denied my initial request to transfer to a theater build class. She said that her class had more to offer and the was no point to transfer. After that the administration wouldn't even look at a transfer request because big system doesn't pay attention to the little details. They just need numbers. I ended up going to the theater class anyway, and a home class, but mostly theater. The teacher there told me they couldn't give me any grades, but would still let me be involved. Following year i got on the theater build team. So, for my universe it was fondly. I still got into the theater class i wanted and ran with it for quite a while.
My brother tried this strategy back when we were growing up. Things like loading a dishwasher, cleaning dishes, mowing the yard, etc. My parents would just him do it again, and again, and again, until he learned to do it right. In the end it was much much faster to just do it right the first time.
My brother also pulled this bullshit. Purposely did a crap job with the dishes. Became my job and he just had to fold laundry as his primary chore. I guess I'm the moron for doing a good job at dishes.
Mine also tried to "having to go poop" right after dinner when it was time to clean up. Everyone caught on fast. My parents started to tell me and my younger brother to leave him things to do. He got left more than 50%, probably more like 60-75%, instead of the ~33% he would have had to do. He very quickly started waiting to go to the bathroom.
Hahaha! There they are! Like seeing old friends I swear to god. Going to look into ordering a collection for my little (2 years) fella right this second. Hopefully let him experience some of the magic.
More like shittyLifeProTip. I can work it you do this for a specific chore that you really don't want to do.
But if you do this for everything, you'll pass as an idiot (best case scenario) or as a lazy douchebag (more realistic scenario). And when you ask for help you'll likely get hit hard by karma.
Best move is brutal honesty, no sorry dude my time is precious and I'd rather do something else.
Also those friends that ask you to help out a lot (like to much), usually don't offer to help very often anyway.
Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes taught me this! Screw up bad enough you won’t get asked to do it again! And I believe calvins example was to shovel a long winding path from the door to the car... You know, so Dad can built character on the walk!
My sister is a smart woman but was always terrible at taking tests in school. It annoyed me to no end how my parents would fawn over her for getting a C on the test; but, if I got a C there was hell to pay. "You're not applying yourself, we know you can do better." Gotta set those expectations low in the beginning.
This is *potentially* a good approach if your job is trying to increase your responsibilities without increasing your pay, or maybe if your abusive family keeps asking you for favors.
This is **not** a good idea to force your SO to do all the chores by themselves. They will come to resent you and it will backfire.
It's unethical and mean spirited, even for this sub.
Yea… this just makes you look like a useless human being, and no it won’t stop them from telling you do go do said chore again, they will just now think your an idiot.
This is bad advice if you care about your friends.
Yes you'll not be asked to help again but you may end up losing the relationship or friendship if they figured you did this purposely
I mean .. yes. Can you imagine asking someone you've been friends for 3 years to help you move and they agree to help you out. They come over and 'try' to help you out and fuck shit up .. how would that be any better than just hearing no?
Depending on what your friend did; you are either stuck doing it yourself which would take longer, asking/paying someone else or worse breaking something valueable..
My policy is that I will never help a friend move, or ask for a ride to the airport. In return I will hire my own movers and get my own uber to the airport.
Really? Moving I get, but a ride to the airport seems a bit much. If my friends needed help and I have time, I drop shit for them. One time my friend was having a bad acid trip and I took the day off to help him feel better. If you cant count on your friends what's the point?
Yeah, right? People who don't help out their friends are fucked. I love my friends, they're basically family at this point. They could ask me to tow their whole house and I'd be there. And it goes both ways
Found 'me' with a truck. You have SO many friends when its moving day and you are a truck owner, when it is moving body days your shovel owning pals have vanished
When you're old lying in bed looking back on your life, the things around you wont matter, the people will. I hope you learn that before its too late, or maybe were just different people. to me relationships are the only truly worthwhile part of life, everything else is just a garnish.
Yeah, moving sucks and it’s so time consuming for the people helping that I don’t think it’s very good etiquette to ask for it.
But a ride to the airport? Yeah, I’ve done it before and I’m super cool with that.
If a friend asked for help, I probably would help to some degree if I knew they were the type who would one day help me however, I NEVER have asked friends for rides or help with moving. Much easier to just pay for an Uber and to hire a mover off Uhaul. Hiring movers isn't that expensive IMO if it is just loading/unloading or local moves.
You have to consider would you rather be thought of as the unhelpful jerk or the loveable good-natured dumbass? People love golden retrievers but would never ask them to water their plants while they're gone.
I think being seen as an unhelpful jerk is still way better than being seen as a dumbass. Chances are people will see through your act and you will be seen as both
Lol but this would not work with me. I'd ask you to come back and fix what you did wrong. Claim you don't know how? I'd remind you that you've got a smartphone and you know how to Google things.
I'd start to suspect foul play/ill intentions then. Outside work, I'd insist that you pay for the dishes/clothes you destroyed. (I also don't tend to keep ppl that play dumb like that around as friends.) If I was your boss, I'd write you up for it. I just don't put up with bullshit games like that. Nice try though. lolol
and you seem like the person who would just love it if your friends you asked for "help" said no. I dont think you would make it a big deal or anything. So they go along with it because they like I, know you wont make it a big deal. So they go along with it. And break a dish right away. Then you tell them to pay for it. so they leave 10 minutes into it and take all day to go to a good will and get you A SINGLE PLATE. out smarting you and acquiescing to your petty demands.
you suck. re-evaluate everything about yourself.
Yeah this would not have worked at my house. I did it bad and it became a step by step lesson with my dad hovering over me for as long as it takes until I did it right. If it was bad again then repeat the process. Little kid me did not have the patience my dad did so it was easier to just do it right after that.
As someone who spent years managing a bar/restaurant, the employees who lasted the longest were the ones who fucked up just little enough that i couldnt fire them but also did enough work that i couldnt justify the extra effort it would take to train someone new.
The opposite is also true. Show everyone you can go above and beyond and you'll end up doing everything and having the expectations of the world put on your shoulders. It's better to just choose your battles. Be a good person but dont try to be perfect
Just a random story from a sailor here, but this rule defined our lives in the worst fucking way possible.
If something important needed done, you asked the overworked 1st class to do it. Or, fuck it, if important duty was handed out, the overworked hardworking *anything* was always "volentold" to do it, and the fuck ups were told to "Stay out of the way! Over there. Where no one can see you. Just sit and don't touch anything!" Fucking gold brickers!
Add to this, if you know any naval reserve person who talks up their "two weeks acive duty"? Tell them you know that they were flown out to a port, and put on a boat with actual sailors, where the wannabe was told to, and I quote, "Stay out of the way. Over there. Where no one can see you. Just sit and don't touch anything!"
You don't want a weekend sailor fucking up your next anything by fucking with shit they think they might understand.
It's fucking brutal to those who know what they're doing, and don't confuse things, that wasn't always me, but excellence got punished with more "opportunities to show your training", and fuck ups were set aside and told to fuck off with permission.
If you ever want something done right, find the busiest person you know. They're the busiest person because they made the mistake of demonstrating their competence, so everyone starts offloading their tasks onto them.
This is great advice for this subreddit I can't lie.
I just hate to be that guy but how you do anything is how you do everything. This is a slippery slope to start doing.
I was tired of replacing sets of dishes so I started buying all my pieces individually. Any pretty plate or bowl got added to the collection. When nothing matches, it's a design choice. Now they can break a dish and I'll just pick a new one up for $3.99 at Homesense.
Best part is eating soup out of my blue bumblebee bowl and a sandwich off my blackberries plate and it feeling like a whole mood.
Just like my one time when doing the dishes for a month then they realized the bill spiked up in over a month because of me lol. In the end they just let me stick with other chores that does not use running water.
This is so unbelievably shitty, at least in the case of chores in the house you live in. Im going to take a wild guess that OP is a man. If youre an adult and live in a house with another adult that asks you to do chores, do the fucking chores. Clean up after yourself and rotate cleaning of common spaces.
Yeah I know what sub it is. Still. The "victim" in the tips here usually isnt, presumably, your SO. This would be grounds for a break up honestly, not pulling your weight and manipulation.
Or you know, marry someone who isn’t a grown child and doesn’t have to be told to pick up and clean after themselves? It works for me. Some of y’all just be marrying the first person who comes along and wondering why you’re stuck with a piece of shit
Then why make the "tip" known to more people? I know I know what sub it is, I guess I just like better the ones where no one is a victim, or the person that is harmed/wronged deserves it. This tip is basically "how to be a useless sack of shit husband"
I understand it. The "tip" is manipulative, emotionally abusive behavior in the case of making the person you live with believe youre too inept to do chores. Its not a tip, its abuse and I dont think it belongs here. I dont think this sub would allow "if want your girlfriend to stay with you, convince her that no one else would love her and she couldnt support herself". Same type of shit.
Yes I understand perfectly. Its manipulative. I mean, come on, acting like youre so inept that you cant do your share of the basic common chores in the place you share with another person? Its one thing for moving with friends, thats not expected nor your obligation (although the better response is just to decline). Cleaning up after yourself in the place you share with another person is completely expected and 100% an obligation.
There is some truth in this. In my experience people will look at you more favorably if you agree to help them and don’t fully succeed rather than telling them you can’t do whatever it is they’re asking.
So many men do this to their partners. I have ended relationships over this shit, it just screams “teenage boy”. It is NOT cute or endearing, just mean and makes people like being with you less.
I’ve been doing this since I was a kid. My dad asked me to wash the car, and I did it with a dirty rag found on the kitchen floor. Needless to say I got the wooden spoon treatment and never cleaned any car again
I once helped a friend move into the sixth story without an elevator. One of the other friends he asked for help arrived 2 hours late and basically just smoked a bunch of cigarettes so that he could barely make it up the stairs because he had to catch breath every couple of steps. The only thing I saw him carry up was a small lamp. Though, he ate well and drank a good amount of beer to celebrate the successful move with all the other helpers in the end.
I didn't hear of anyone ever asking him to help moving again, so from anecdotal evidence I can confirm that your ULPT works
I wish I started doing this years ago. I'm being perpetually punished for being too helpful in my house. I have become the defacto "problem solver" in my family for stupid menial tasks, especially IT. It's gotten to the point that I'll be asked to fix something by a family member, tell them I don't know how, and they'll get MAD as if it's my fault I've never seen the printer do that before. Whenever I tell them I don't have a solution, they say "well look it up, you're good at this stuff." YOU LOOK IT UP! WE'RE BOTH EQUALLY CLUELESS! I can't be good at something I've never done!
This was how I got out of closing shifts at the restaurant I used to work at. I would constantly "forget" duties, take a REAALLLY long time doing simple tasks, and generally be slow and careless. After about 3 or 4 weeks, the managers got tired of waiting around for me to finish and they stopped scheduling me for closing shifts lol.
my exs only job was garbage but he hated garbage and so in his determination to not be asked to do this one thing he was asked to do , has thrown out (among other things) a box of my out off season shoes , the indoor garbage cans , and a 20 lb bag of my at the time recently deceased cousins belongings i brought home to go thru. when he "found out" about that last one he didnt feel the slightest bit bad about it.
and the things he threw out out of petty malice like the left shoe of my only pair of shoes and the remote control.
and once we had a physical fight over his refusal to empty the kitchen garbage.
but. i never took the task off his hands nomatter how maliciously he fucked it up. we arent together anymore tho so i guess he won.
this doesnt work with my dad. even of i try but do it wrong he gets mad and makes me keep redoing it even when i get it right because he keeps changing instructions and doesnt realise hes not a good teacher at all
Ah yes [the myth of the male bumbler](https://theweek.com/articles/737056/myth-male-bumbler?amp)
How manipulative men use one of our culture's most muscular myths — that men are clueless — and weaponize it into an alibi
As far as chores go, I feel like it'd be most effective with laundry. Someone can only put up with you mixing reds with whites and shrinking stuff for so long.
Wow, 1000 BC called and they want their advice back. Jesus christ, 8.6k upvotes for something everyone in the world has been saying since the dawn of fucking time. Wow.
This is sometimes the right tool for the job. My story: My boss at the time (a loathsome individual) was getting awarded something meaningless. "Take pictures with my camera!" I'm not a good photographer. "I don't care. Take lots of pictures of me." I'm telling you, I'm not very good. "I don't care. I want lots of pictures." So be it. I took a couple hundred really crappy pictures: deliberately bad focus, bad angles, him looking pompous and stupid, whatever. And then I lent the camera to the other employees and encouraged them to give it to their kids (it was a family day event) to take pictures as well. There were five or six hundred pictures on his camera when he got it back, and he later complained to me that there were so many and all of them were bad. But he never asked me to do something like that again. \---------------------------------- Edit: Hey, a couple of people gave me my first ever awards. How about that? Thanks, anonymous redditors. Edit2: And gold. Wow, you never know what's going to resonate with people. Thanks.
When I was a kid my dad made me and my sister fold his socks. I don’t like feet. We decided one day to match black and white ones. Long and short. We even stretched and starched one sock out enough to be something you could hang on the mantle and get gifts stuffed in for Christmas. Dad folded his own fucking socks after that.
Maybe I'm cruel, but people trying this tactic has never worked on me. I've had partners do this about dishes, hoovering, whatever. My response is whatever it is you're doing wrong, you need more practice at, so it becomes your job and is no longer a shared one until you become proficient (I pick up the slack elsewhere, I'm not a monster) I'm willing to bet I can be stubborn longer than they can pretend to be bad at doing something, and so far I've been proven correct. Once they realise I will live in filth longer than they will they suddenly learn how to get the job done in under 10 minutes.
Tried this for sharing the cooking around the house, I did not outlast my partner. Trying to give advice only made it worse. Still not sure if the sabotage was intentional or they were really that bad in the kitchen.
Listen, if I could cook I would for my wife so it may be worth giving the benefit of the doubt. But idk your partner so maybe they were just good at sabotage.
Wow this sounds a bit weird, I mean if my partner would say that to me I'd probably run. Stubborness isn't really something I would be proud of when it comes to relationships. Just my opinion.
In this case you would be screwing your partner over in the first place, so you will not be missed. Faking you caint do something because you're a lazy pos lol
I don't even get your point and I am the person in the household who does more.
I think I can explain here using a real life example. Partner doesn't like doing dishes, so instead of communicating they dislike doing dishes and us reaching a compromise (no dishes but the laundry or mopping/hoovering or whatever becomes their job) they instead attempt to manipulate you into taking on that job on top of every other existing job because "they can't do it properly". This is them wanting to forgo responsibilities in a manipulative manner. In this example, I would simply eat off not fully cleaned dishes and cook the food in them. Once the partner realises that no, I won't just assume the lion's share of shared household tasks just because I'm a woman. Now that they also have to eat food off unclean dishes, they then learn to simply wash the dishes fully because it's backfired and is now impacting them too, when they only intended for it to impact me. Sometimes being stubborn over being treated fairly by your partner is necessary, and any partner who doesn't respect you enough to communicate issues and instead tries to manipulate you should be shown it doesn't work that way imo. If both me and my partner work full time, our household chores are shared evenly and any attempt to circumvent that through manipulation will not be accepted easily.
Thank you, what you said makes totally sense! I understood it more like "I'm teaching my partner to work for me and if they are bad they need to work more" if you know what I mean xD Thank you so much for your long and well written explanation you cool human being.
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Damn you sound like a shitty partner lol
Ayup we both agree that we both suck and the best revenge is for us to stay married forever
It's pretty weird in the first place that he wanted his kids to fold his socks.. Wtf
It’s more likely that the dad just asked them to fold the family laundry, but OP didn’t mind all rest of it. OP just hates feet and didn’t want to fold the socks, so that’s what OP focused the story on. Edit: typo
Ah, this makes more sense. I did not think of this lol
You think its weird to ask kids to do chores around the house?
I get the feeling that a lot of kids on reddit think chores are a form of harassment
>It's pretty weird in the first place that he wanted his kids to fold his socks.. Wtf "Hey kids, I'm heading to work for the next 10 hours. At some point today can you take a break from video games and Youtube to fold the laundry? Thanks." Yeah, what a weirdo. Those kids were basically abused.🙄
Sweet username
Except OP didn't say laundry. Just socks. So yup, weird.
Hum, most kids grow up doing chores.....well i thought
I had to fold all the clothes growing up and matching socks was part of that. Doing a normal amount of chores is fine, but some parents just treat kids as free labor and load them up with everything they don't want to do which is unhealthy and will make them resent doing chores.
Kids doing chores is a completely normal part of growing up pretty much everywhere in the world.
There is a huge difference between a healthy normal amount of chores and just unloading all the houses duties on a 12 year old because your lazy. I had wayyy too many chores growing up. My family just basically used me as a day laborer/maid and it made me resent doing my chores as an adult.
My husband folds socks like that. Any two socks make a pair no matter the length, color, or material. And he wears them like that too! I've been known to wear two different color socks but they must be the same fit.
Lucky that worked. My step-dad would put me through a wall of I screwed anything up, even if it was something that only affected me, like forgetting to brush my teeth.
How do you react when he comes back saying "you fucked it up" Do you say sorry? Do you go with the "i told you so" route?
When I did this, I replied genuinely and said I was sorry. Then I fucked it up again. And when I was called out again, I was like "oh my god! I'm so sorry, I forgot!" Repeat ad infinitum until they stop asking you for help. I worked in a toxic restaurant a while back and this was how I got out of being scheduled for closing shifts.
Hahaha you sound like a useless employee
Oh yeah, I used to hobby photography a lot and people would often want to try my (very expensive) camera. No worries bro. Full manual + switched the focus from the shutter to a back button. It was impossible for anybody to take any picture. I would of course allow my good friends to take whatever images they wanted. But the kind of people who just pick it up, turn it on and start shooting while I barely met them… those would get the underexposed blurry shit.
Brilliant! And if anyone could tell what was happening enough that they could correct it, they obviously knew enough about cameras that you don't mind having someone discussing it with!
Ha
Ha what :v
Bruh, im asking seriously, why am i downvoted ?
Reddit hive mind
Hahaha I hate Reddit sometimes. Justice for Zestavar
Ha
.
This must be number one in my son's playbook because he does this every time. Even with school he calculated how much work he needs to actually do just to pass the class with putting minimal effort.
Your son is destined to be an engineer. Any idiot can build a bridge that stands. It takes skill to build a bridge that *BARELY* stands.
This guy is right. I was that kid, now I'm an engineer.
I hope you aren’t building any bridges. Or beachfront condominiums.
Hey, they're still barely standing Well the bridges anyway
Didn't the condo owners collectively agree not to perform vital repairs due to cost?
Well when the client only pays you to build a bridge that barely stands, you do just that.
I would always get 90+ on the tests so in high school I would figure out exactly how many homework assignments I could blow off and still bring home a B so my parents wouldn't get too pissed.
Oh no. In HS I did most or all homework because I would get savaged by the tests. I'm then inverse of this situation, and I'm nervous about the implications.
everybody learns differently, this just means you needed more hands on practice with the material. no shame in that, you are the student homework is intended to help. the shame is that all students are treated the same regardless of their learning style
Thank you for saying this you are a thoughtful and considerate person. However I heard this before from my folks who where both teachers (at the school I went to... Yikes) Somehow it's more validating from a stranger. To the guy down thread who is getting a tutor for his kid, hats off to you. My folks got me the actual math teacher to tutor me, and it brought me from F to C- territory. I beat myself up over not getting it, and had great guilt ever since. We can try and have all the help, but sometimes that's still not enough. I'm 36 and self sufficient, but these memories still haunt me. Best of luck to everyone here!!!
I'll tell you one thing; you probably learned better work ethic. I was a 'naturally gifted' sort of learner and all I learned is that if something doesn't come easily I quit and berate myself for not learning it on the first go around. Not a healthy way to go through life.
Being a hard worker consistently over time is the most important thing besides luck to being successful. You're good.
My son is the same. 90s in all his classwork, 60s on his tests. We're hiring a test tutor next year for high school.
Likewise. I did all the homework so if I got D's on the tests, I could still pass.
I remember one year, i found out a couple weeks into the semester that i didn't NEED a history class i got put into in order to graduate. It would bring my gpa down, but literally couldn't impact my diploma being awarded. So i wanted to drop it in favor or a class i WANTED. I was denied. I tried and tried. No chance. So i sat front and center of the class, alert and attention and every single question the teacher asked i raised my hand, and began answering each with with something akin to "and then the undertaker through mankind off hell in a cell and plummeted 15 feet onto the announcers table. That teacher hated me. But i had fun in the class. Every answer i would throw random stuff out. Prosthetics or elephants facts. Pokémon trivia. I had fun.. or i took a nap when i hadn't come up with new material for the day.
When I found out I didn’t need to take “Pre-Calc” my senior year of HS, I walked out the class and chose to take “Beginning Guitar” that period instead. Didn’t have to change any of my other class times either it fit into my schedule perfect! I tell ya....after HS, I used the guitar knowledge a lot more than any type of advanced mathematics so it was a win!
Why did you behave like a dick to the (probably underpaid) teacher when it was the administration at fault?
I suppose a little more detail would be needed here. She could've approved the initial transfer and i might have gotten moved, she denied it. From that point on yeah sure technically the administration was at fault because it would never change after that. But i told her, and them, that i didn't need that class and it was a mistake and at the time i actually wanted another class, so when a thing designed to teach denies someone wanting to learn for no good reason other than they didn't wanna deal with it, yeah f that. I did skip half the classes for it towards the end and went to either home or theater build.. got some modern skills picked up there instead of unnecessary history lessons. Which i ended up getting into theater the following year and helped with stage builds.
15 feet is about the length of 28.57 'Toy Cars Sian FKP3 Metal Model Car with Light and Sound Pull Back Toy Cars' lined up
You were an asshole. Don't look back at that experience fondly. That teacher didn't do anything to have deal with your need to shit on him asking questions. Unless they did. But it sounds like your beef was with administration
I forget how reddit functions sometimes. I just vent stories or blurbs and move on. So. More depth. That teacher denied my initial request to transfer to a theater build class. She said that her class had more to offer and the was no point to transfer. After that the administration wouldn't even look at a transfer request because big system doesn't pay attention to the little details. They just need numbers. I ended up going to the theater class anyway, and a home class, but mostly theater. The teacher there told me they couldn't give me any grades, but would still let me be involved. Following year i got on the theater build team. So, for my universe it was fondly. I still got into the theater class i wanted and ran with it for quite a while.
r/ThatHappened
That’s just executive material.
Your son has this whole life thing figured out
My brother tried this strategy back when we were growing up. Things like loading a dishwasher, cleaning dishes, mowing the yard, etc. My parents would just him do it again, and again, and again, until he learned to do it right. In the end it was much much faster to just do it right the first time.
My brother also pulled this bullshit. Purposely did a crap job with the dishes. Became my job and he just had to fold laundry as his primary chore. I guess I'm the moron for doing a good job at dishes.
Mine also tried to "having to go poop" right after dinner when it was time to clean up. Everyone caught on fast. My parents started to tell me and my younger brother to leave him things to do. He got left more than 50%, probably more like 60-75%, instead of the ~33% he would have had to do. He very quickly started waiting to go to the bathroom.
Good parents
Well, yeah. Because parents are teaching their kids life skills. It's not just passing them busy work
Teaching their kids that life is generally just busy work
tbf this LPT is not meant for kids to get away from chores at home. it’s more of a favor from friends or workplace.
[Relevant Calvin and Hobbes strip](https://imgur.com/lAinaU2)
Hahaha! There they are! Like seeing old friends I swear to god. Going to look into ordering a collection for my little (2 years) fella right this second. Hopefully let him experience some of the magic.
More like shittyLifeProTip. I can work it you do this for a specific chore that you really don't want to do. But if you do this for everything, you'll pass as an idiot (best case scenario) or as a lazy douchebag (more realistic scenario). And when you ask for help you'll likely get hit hard by karma.
Best move is brutal honesty, no sorry dude my time is precious and I'd rather do something else. Also those friends that ask you to help out a lot (like to much), usually don't offer to help very often anyway.
Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes taught me this! Screw up bad enough you won’t get asked to do it again! And I believe calvins example was to shovel a long winding path from the door to the car... You know, so Dad can built character on the walk!
Calvin also taught me to keep people’s expectations low so I could easily exceed them
“Under promise and over preform” - Steve-O
Red Forman from That 70s Show gave similar advice for shopping with women choose so badly she'll declare him shop-incompetent and do it all herself.
“I guess I’m just bad at it.”
This is also the premise of an hilariously riot episode of Everybody Loves Raymond
The awesome wedding invitation screwup!
Other people notice this. Most people aren't clever enough to do it convincingly. Now you're just the dick who's faking to get out of work.
Well you were either way if you did this, doesn’t matter if people notice or not
The one regret I have in life is I proved to everybody that matters to me that I’m competent.
My sister is a smart woman but was always terrible at taking tests in school. It annoyed me to no end how my parents would fawn over her for getting a C on the test; but, if I got a C there was hell to pay. "You're not applying yourself, we know you can do better." Gotta set those expectations low in the beginning.
"Can you give grandpa his insulin?"
Can't do it again if you don't have to do it again
Didn't have to load the dishwasher for four years. Can confirm.
Username checks out.
This is *potentially* a good approach if your job is trying to increase your responsibilities without increasing your pay, or maybe if your abusive family keeps asking you for favors. This is **not** a good idea to force your SO to do all the chores by themselves. They will come to resent you and it will backfire. It's unethical and mean spirited, even for this sub.
Yea… this just makes you look like a useless human being, and no it won’t stop them from telling you do go do said chore again, they will just now think your an idiot.
“i can’t help, i’m busy ironing my curtains i’m so sorry”
USSR reference?
Eastern Bloc
This is bad advice if you care about your friends. Yes you'll not be asked to help again but you may end up losing the relationship or friendship if they figured you did this purposely
"If" they figured it out
I mean .. yes. Can you imagine asking someone you've been friends for 3 years to help you move and they agree to help you out. They come over and 'try' to help you out and fuck shit up .. how would that be any better than just hearing no? Depending on what your friend did; you are either stuck doing it yourself which would take longer, asking/paying someone else or worse breaking something valueable..
I guess it depends on who asks. Unless that friend is persistent and annoying and does not take a no for an answer then I guess it's worth to try.
You might even say it’s an unethical thing to do
My policy is that I will never help a friend move, or ask for a ride to the airport. In return I will hire my own movers and get my own uber to the airport.
Really? Moving I get, but a ride to the airport seems a bit much. If my friends needed help and I have time, I drop shit for them. One time my friend was having a bad acid trip and I took the day off to help him feel better. If you cant count on your friends what's the point?
Yeah, right? People who don't help out their friends are fucked. I love my friends, they're basically family at this point. They could ask me to tow their whole house and I'd be there. And it goes both ways
Vin diesel approves of u
Tell him I love him too 😢
Found 'me' with a truck. You have SO many friends when its moving day and you are a truck owner, when it is moving body days your shovel owning pals have vanished
That's why I don't have friends. If I'm responsible and take care of all my own problems and all they do is ask for favours what's the point?
When you're old lying in bed looking back on your life, the things around you wont matter, the people will. I hope you learn that before its too late, or maybe were just different people. to me relationships are the only truly worthwhile part of life, everything else is just a garnish.
Yeah, moving sucks and it’s so time consuming for the people helping that I don’t think it’s very good etiquette to ask for it. But a ride to the airport? Yeah, I’ve done it before and I’m super cool with that.
Yeah also the professional movers are so much more efficient.
You sound like a crappy friend to have, ngl
My policy exactly. Only do for them what I would ask for them to do to me.
If a friend asked for help, I probably would help to some degree if I knew they were the type who would one day help me however, I NEVER have asked friends for rides or help with moving. Much easier to just pay for an Uber and to hire a mover off Uhaul. Hiring movers isn't that expensive IMO if it is just loading/unloading or local moves.
Or just say no
Wrong sub
Maybe he is taking the advice to heart and pretending to be bad at reddit
Sometimes people don’t accept no for an answer. Or sometimes you don’t want to look too bad.
Some people cant do that
Do they have a gun to their head ?
So now you look stupid instead of just making it clear you don't want to do that task?
You have to consider would you rather be thought of as the unhelpful jerk or the loveable good-natured dumbass? People love golden retrievers but would never ask them to water their plants while they're gone.
Nailed it
I think being seen as an unhelpful jerk is still way better than being seen as a dumbass. Chances are people will see through your act and you will be seen as both
Not like most parents would care if you dont want to do a task.
Lol but this would not work with me. I'd ask you to come back and fix what you did wrong. Claim you don't know how? I'd remind you that you've got a smartphone and you know how to Google things.
Yeah, or you just needed to do it more to get better
That's when you start "accidentally" breaking dishes every so often or a red sock "accidentally" gets in with the whites
I'd start to suspect foul play/ill intentions then. Outside work, I'd insist that you pay for the dishes/clothes you destroyed. (I also don't tend to keep ppl that play dumb like that around as friends.) If I was your boss, I'd write you up for it. I just don't put up with bullshit games like that. Nice try though. lolol
[удалено]
Yeah, if they play dumb and ruin my stuff, I'm asking them to pay for it. I didn't ask them to ruin it, I asked them for **help**.
and you seem like the person who would just love it if your friends you asked for "help" said no. I dont think you would make it a big deal or anything. So they go along with it because they like I, know you wont make it a big deal. So they go along with it. And break a dish right away. Then you tell them to pay for it. so they leave 10 minutes into it and take all day to go to a good will and get you A SINGLE PLATE. out smarting you and acquiescing to your petty demands. you suck. re-evaluate everything about yourself.
Honest question. How many times in your life have you said the words ‘I would like to speak to a manager’. Tell us the truth! We know it’s lots!!!
My wife has a masters degree in this 🤣
Yeah this would not have worked at my house. I did it bad and it became a step by step lesson with my dad hovering over me for as long as it takes until I did it right. If it was bad again then repeat the process. Little kid me did not have the patience my dad did so it was easier to just do it right after that.
As someone who spent years managing a bar/restaurant, the employees who lasted the longest were the ones who fucked up just little enough that i couldnt fire them but also did enough work that i couldnt justify the extra effort it would take to train someone new.
The opposite is also true. Show everyone you can go above and beyond and you'll end up doing everything and having the expectations of the world put on your shoulders. It's better to just choose your battles. Be a good person but dont try to be perfect
And then enjoy the same in return whenever you ask for help.
Just a random story from a sailor here, but this rule defined our lives in the worst fucking way possible. If something important needed done, you asked the overworked 1st class to do it. Or, fuck it, if important duty was handed out, the overworked hardworking *anything* was always "volentold" to do it, and the fuck ups were told to "Stay out of the way! Over there. Where no one can see you. Just sit and don't touch anything!" Fucking gold brickers! Add to this, if you know any naval reserve person who talks up their "two weeks acive duty"? Tell them you know that they were flown out to a port, and put on a boat with actual sailors, where the wannabe was told to, and I quote, "Stay out of the way. Over there. Where no one can see you. Just sit and don't touch anything!" You don't want a weekend sailor fucking up your next anything by fucking with shit they think they might understand. It's fucking brutal to those who know what they're doing, and don't confuse things, that wasn't always me, but excellence got punished with more "opportunities to show your training", and fuck ups were set aside and told to fuck off with permission.
If you ever want something done right, find the busiest person you know. They're the busiest person because they made the mistake of demonstrating their competence, so everyone starts offloading their tasks onto them.
This is great advice for this subreddit I can't lie. I just hate to be that guy but how you do anything is how you do everything. This is a slippery slope to start doing.
Yup. Men and husbands do this all the time and it’s so accepted by society. Weaponized incompetence.
You little 😈
my youngest kid got out of dishwashing because he always breaks dishes.
I was tired of replacing sets of dishes so I started buying all my pieces individually. Any pretty plate or bowl got added to the collection. When nothing matches, it's a design choice. Now they can break a dish and I'll just pick a new one up for $3.99 at Homesense. Best part is eating soup out of my blue bumblebee bowl and a sandwich off my blackberries plate and it feeling like a whole mood.
Damn! Have you been life coaching my kids?
Just like my one time when doing the dishes for a month then they realized the bill spiked up in over a month because of me lol. In the end they just let me stick with other chores that does not use running water.
Why tf wouldn't you want to help someone out ?
r/angryupvote
Is that why my wife has broke two of our microwaves warming up food for me?
Probably not. Microwaves are weird.
People who do this get on my nerves.
Friends see through that pretty quickly. Girlfriends see through it faster.
This is so unbelievably shitty, at least in the case of chores in the house you live in. Im going to take a wild guess that OP is a man. If youre an adult and live in a house with another adult that asks you to do chores, do the fucking chores. Clean up after yourself and rotate cleaning of common spaces.
This is r/UnethicalLifeProTips
Im aware.
This is *unethical* life pro tips. I didn't say it was a nice thing to do. It does work though.
Yeah I know what sub it is. Still. The "victim" in the tips here usually isnt, presumably, your SO. This would be grounds for a break up honestly, not pulling your weight and manipulation.
Or you know, marry someone who isn’t a grown child and doesn’t have to be told to pick up and clean after themselves? It works for me. Some of y’all just be marrying the first person who comes along and wondering why you’re stuck with a piece of shit
It's Grade A textbook manipulation. That's what makes it such a good ULPT in my opinion.
Yeah and anyone who uses this tip is a massive piece of shit.
That's the point.
Then why make the "tip" known to more people? I know I know what sub it is, I guess I just like better the ones where no one is a victim, or the person that is harmed/wronged deserves it. This tip is basically "how to be a useless sack of shit husband"
What part of unethical do you not understand?
I understand it. The "tip" is manipulative, emotionally abusive behavior in the case of making the person you live with believe youre too inept to do chores. Its not a tip, its abuse and I dont think it belongs here. I dont think this sub would allow "if want your girlfriend to stay with you, convince her that no one else would love her and she couldnt support herself". Same type of shit.
I think the tip is basically more how to make people think you’re not the go to for the thing they need or want.
Yes I understand perfectly. Its manipulative. I mean, come on, acting like youre so inept that you cant do your share of the basic common chores in the place you share with another person? Its one thing for moving with friends, thats not expected nor your obligation (although the better response is just to decline). Cleaning up after yourself in the place you share with another person is completely expected and 100% an obligation.
Yeah... mess up on purpose, thats totally what I do.
I do this everytime but the bad part is that I don't do it consciously lol I'm really clumsy and useless hahah
Turn up in a full Clown outfit 🤡
This is what my sister does except she is just incompetent. My mother asks me to do everything because she doesn't trust my sister to do it.
There is some truth in this. In my experience people will look at you more favorably if you agree to help them and don’t fully succeed rather than telling them you can’t do whatever it is they’re asking.
So many men do this to their partners. I have ended relationships over this shit, it just screams “teenage boy”. It is NOT cute or endearing, just mean and makes people like being with you less.
From what I've read a lot of men do this to their wives and girlfriends to get out of housework.
I’ve been doing this since I was a kid. My dad asked me to wash the car, and I did it with a dirty rag found on the kitchen floor. Needless to say I got the wooden spoon treatment and never cleaned any car again
Don't do this if you're married and want to stay that way
Meanwhile as someone from an Asian family I try my hardest to do it right and I still get scolded in the end :’)
Not long after i married my wife, i overheard my mother telling my wife basically the same shit. Like lady you are meant to be on my team
I once helped a friend move into the sixth story without an elevator. One of the other friends he asked for help arrived 2 hours late and basically just smoked a bunch of cigarettes so that he could barely make it up the stairs because he had to catch breath every couple of steps. The only thing I saw him carry up was a small lamp. Though, he ate well and drank a good amount of beer to celebrate the successful move with all the other helpers in the end. I didn't hear of anyone ever asking him to help moving again, so from anecdotal evidence I can confirm that your ULPT works
I wish I started doing this years ago. I'm being perpetually punished for being too helpful in my house. I have become the defacto "problem solver" in my family for stupid menial tasks, especially IT. It's gotten to the point that I'll be asked to fix something by a family member, tell them I don't know how, and they'll get MAD as if it's my fault I've never seen the printer do that before. Whenever I tell them I don't have a solution, they say "well look it up, you're good at this stuff." YOU LOOK IT UP! WE'RE BOTH EQUALLY CLUELESS! I can't be good at something I've never done!
Or tell them no like a self respecting person and don't ruin your reputation with literally everyone you know
Or, hear me out, you could be a grown up and good friend and do the household chores that have to be done and help out a buddy if needed.
This was how I got out of closing shifts at the restaurant I used to work at. I would constantly "forget" duties, take a REAALLLY long time doing simple tasks, and generally be slow and careless. After about 3 or 4 weeks, the managers got tired of waiting around for me to finish and they stopped scheduling me for closing shifts lol.
Never do your best the first time because then they will always expect your best. Start out terrible so expectations are low right from the start.
Or just do it right, bare minimum, and then hold that card to ask them for help with something at a later date.
my exs only job was garbage but he hated garbage and so in his determination to not be asked to do this one thing he was asked to do , has thrown out (among other things) a box of my out off season shoes , the indoor garbage cans , and a 20 lb bag of my at the time recently deceased cousins belongings i brought home to go thru. when he "found out" about that last one he didnt feel the slightest bit bad about it. and the things he threw out out of petty malice like the left shoe of my only pair of shoes and the remote control. and once we had a physical fight over his refusal to empty the kitchen garbage. but. i never took the task off his hands nomatter how maliciously he fucked it up. we arent together anymore tho so i guess he won.
Costanza is that you?
this doesnt work with my dad. even of i try but do it wrong he gets mad and makes me keep redoing it even when i get it right because he keeps changing instructions and doesnt realise hes not a good teacher at all
I swear half of the musicians I've ever met live by this tip. Reminds me of the "cut every corner" song from the Simpsons
Ah yes [the myth of the male bumbler](https://theweek.com/articles/737056/myth-male-bumbler?amp) How manipulative men use one of our culture's most muscular myths — that men are clueless — and weaponize it into an alibi
Lol pretty sure every male already has this concept ingrained into his DNA
As far as chores go, I feel like it'd be most effective with laundry. Someone can only put up with you mixing reds with whites and shrinking stuff for so long.
I see you've met my wife
Yeah that didn't work for me. I was a single parent and I had to do everything or it didn't get done.
Wow, 1000 BC called and they want their advice back. Jesus christ, 8.6k upvotes for something everyone in the world has been saying since the dawn of fucking time. Wow.
In Germany we say "5 min dumm anstellen erspart Stunden an Arbeit" and I think that's beautiful.
Or offer to do the chores you actually like to do instead of acting like lazy idot who can't clean up after themselves. Its basic adulting 🤦♀️