Sick to the back teeth of useless men using weaponised incompetence at work. Is it just me?!

[OscillateItsTitsALot]

Sorry but I’m so annoyed I can’t sleep thinking about how utterly infuriating I find the men in my workplace.
I work in a small organisation of 14 people, in a management role.
2 of the staff are men.
100% of the men in the organisation are absolutely useless in basic tasks and I’m getting really sick of it. Some of the women treat them like they’re particularly stupid toddlers as well.
Recent examples include:

• the men messaging women more senior than them for email addresses they could get themselves if they just spent a few seconds looking in the online address book
• On a recent work away day, one of the men asked me if I could give him directions to the restaurant we were all meeting at. I told him it will be available on Google Maps.
• Occupying the vast majority of time of our shared executive assistant because they can’t do things like organise their own travel or book hotels (the EA role is focussed around setting up meetings and finance work, we are all expected to make our own travel arrangements and to only use her if it’s a complex requirement). One of the men apparently needs the PA to put a reminder in his calendar for when he has to set off from his house to the train station, because he forgets otherwise
• A female colleague created a special word document recently because one of the men kept forgetting the work he’d been asked to do. She updates it for him. She’s more senior than him, and I’m quite annoyed she’s gone to these lengths rather than just telling him to start making lists himself
• One of the men asking if he can have no meetings before 10am because the school run tires him out. He has 1 child.
• They both take an eternity to respond to a simple Teams message. The incompetence they can get away with is something I feel women would be going through a disciplinary for.
• They’re always tired, or having to go out and run errands for their families or taking an hour to do the school run so can’t be available for meetings between 3 and 4. I feel when women do this, it’s seen as almost a sackable offence and at the very least a sign of incompetence. But when men do it they’re tired little heroes.

I have raised with other managers that we need to have better expectations and not set a standard whereby women are doing the work of men displaying weaponised incompetence. However it was met with what I can only describe as bemusement and “Well you know what they’re like, they need a bit of hand holding sometimes”. These are men in their late 30’s and 40’s FFS.

There are only 3 women who pander to the men but they’re quite protective of the men, and are quite Senior so what they say goes.

Does this happen in other workplaces? I’m sick of picking up the slack for them, for the constant mistakes and moaning about being tired from being dads. I am looking at other opportunities, I can’t work much longer in a workplace that treats women so appallingly

Not to mention many women will have to put up with it in the home and could do without it in their workplace

I think this is a bit of a small business recurring problem. Left a small business similar size to yours a few years ago and honestly the inability to use address books or shared diaries or teams was shocking. You wouldn't be able to get away with that at the large company I work at now.

Is there a place for training 'opportunities' for these men to be shown the basics of modern IT? Do you require them to do any kind of online training ever (health and safety, safeguarding, etc) - maybe include a basic Microsoft 360 course in that. You could also initiate some kind of team forum to discuss optimising everyone's time and be a bit collegiate about this. Sometimes these idiots people are able to see this when it's put to them in a wider context.

Weaponised incompetency 😅And when women are incompetent, they are just incompetent?

@TartyTara your comment makes no sense and shows your lack of critical thinking. Weaponised incompetence is not the same as incompetence.

Both sexes are equally able to employ weaponised incompetence. It’s simply that men do it far more often. When women are expected to pick up the slack or pander, it becomes a feminist issue.

We don't get that here in my NHS clinic because the female staff would massacre them. We don't have time for that shit. But offices Ive worked in before definitely. I was once asked to warm a male colleagues lunch up for him because he didn't know how to use the microwave 😆 didn't do it I just walked out, Im not his mother.I

Yes! I have come across this at my work and its infuriating.

Not being able to navigate the computer system and so asking other people to find perfectly accessible information such as email addresses etc

So because I don’t agree with you, I lack critical thinking 🤔
The amount of women in my workplace who struggle with technology and need a man to help them plug their pc or keyboard in on a weekly basis is staggering. It’s not weaponised incompetence, it’s just incompetence and can’t be asked. As soon as it’s a man, they en up on the feminist forum on MN. Just ridiculous.

I work alone and so I don't deal with this in my professional life but when I look around me at the women I know and the men they are with I see women putting in so much effort into every aspect of life and rarely complaining about it while men sit around reaping the benefits but complain if they are asked to lift a finger and taking little care to help maintain or contribute to what their partners do for them and their families. These men also have very little appreciation for all the work it takes they just expect it.

Well I’ve raised the issue of women doing menial work for men, and it was dismissed and came with flippant responses.

Presumably the senior women being asked for email addresses (for example) aren't being compelled to hand them out to these men? And as senior members of staff, they would be capable of telling a junior employee where to find them himself if they wanted to? Like you did, with the directions.

I expect the issue is that while some of this behavior irritates you and you view it as a case of 'women doing menial work for men', the other women involved are happy (or at least not bothered) to pass on an email address or write a list of tasks.

So what do you expect the company to do in that situation?

I think knowing this happens and allowing it to continue is a pretty awful way to treat women in the workplace.

Do we think that these two dopes would be top-of-the-line, self-starting, model employees if they were suddenly moved to an all male office? Or would they still be lazy cretins looking for an easy ride?

Because that's the issue; they're taking the piss and their management are allowing it. That's an awful way to treat employees, women or otherwise. When you say your employer treats women in the workplace awfully, there's a very specific implication there.

And yes I have been (rightly) pulled up on mistakes I’ve made, but the men make worse mistakes on a regular basis and absolutely nothing is said.

If that's the case then you should absolutely file a grievance against the company.

As with anybody that uses "weaponised incompitance" in the work place.
You have a management problem.

@TartyTara yes because you’re still conflating incompetence and weaponised incompetence.

If you don’t get it there’s nothing more I can say.

In my workplace experience, it's almost always women (not all women) that seem to revel in IT illiteracy.
We had several women in their mid 20s who would openly state they were "useless" at computers, with a laugh, and go to the only man in the office if they wanted to ask something about Excel.
This is all anecdata anyway, but I have never personally worked with a man who was proud to be useless at computers.

That’s nice for you. OP is working somewhere else. Somewhere that has different standards for men and women, where men expect women to pick up for them amd are not held to account for their behaviour. So in her workplace- not yours, hers- it is a feminist issue.

And then what is the issue if it’s the women who are useless?

I used to employ 8 men, an entire company of them and got asked to help them arrange their diary’s etc. I used to laugh at them tell them bluntly they were big boys and sort it out themselves, but the fact they would ask me was crazy.

What I found most over 25 years with men vs women in the workplace is that the men would get lazy quicker. 6 months in they will drop the ball, with my female staff now 3-4 years in they are still killing it and give 100%.

I think it’s complacency.

You say that where the OP works that there are different standards for men and women, yet the management (who are women) are just as incompetent for not stamping this out.
In the OP she says that they are even encouraging it.

Doesn’t happen where I work- the men work harder (most of the time).

Exactly. Something like 40% of women don't even work full time.

@Fizzy208 also the women in the team are held to a different standard, if they don’t do something her way she gets annoyed and frustrated but it’s perfectly fine for the men to not do it/do it badly.

@OscillateItsTitsALot There are only 3 women who pander to the men but they’re quite protective of the men, and are quite Senior so what they say goes.

Let me get this straight: so what both of you are saying is that there are female managers who are mistreating female employees, right?

I have seen several such cases myself, and I have always wondered why.

Anyway, when a woman mistreats another woman, are we sure it's a feminist issue?
I think the blame is with the woman doing the mistreating, not with men / society / the patriarchy etc. Unless, I don't know, we want to deny this woman any agency, think she's not responsible for her actions, and that she was brainwashed by society into mistreating other women.

Do you disagree?

Internalised misogyny is absolutely a feminist issue. Feminism isn’t about blaming men for everything

@OscillateItsTitsALot OK, and who is responsible for internalised misogyny, and what should be done about that?

Do we hold these women responsible for their internalised misogyny, or do we deny them agency, deem them not responsible for their actions, and blame it all on something / someone else?

Of course we hold women responsible if they display misogyny. Who else would we expect to take responsibility?

I ask because I have been in countless discussions (in real life) along the lines of: "yes, poor her, it's not really her fault, it's how she was brought up" and I always found this line of thought infuriating

My daughter is a police officer. She tells me that after meetings the men walk out, leaving the woman to clear up the coffee cups. She now walks out with the men.

You are right. Men are strategic and women are collaborative by nature. They won’t do a task in order to force others to do it for them. And they won’t recognise your rank if you are a woman. They apply the same strategy at home to sharing of housework. At work they only want to appear to be doing the “important” stuff. It’s disgusting really and they get away with it. I have no solution for you.