Husband’s laundry fail goes viral, Reddit users cry ‘weaponised incompetence’

A husband's laundry act has infuriated the internet. Photo / Reddit

A wife has publicly shamed her husband for his incompetence in doing the laundry, sparking a flood of outrage online.

Taking to Reddit, she shared a photo of her washing on a drying rack on an apartment balcony.

“Asked my husband to hang the clothes,” she captioned the post.

There was a clothes horse loaded up in the middle, with a massive pile of wet, heavy laundry – everything from socks and undies to kids’ clothes.

Most of the airer’s outer rungs had only a single T-shirt or other adult-sized item hanging from them.

Some rungs at the back of the photo looked like they were barely used.

“Apparently there was no more space in the rack and everything else was ‘small items’ (kids’ T-shirts, socks and shorts),” the poster wrote.

“Needless to say, nothing at the top got dry.”

The post was shared in the popular “Mildly Infuriating” Reddit thread, where most found it extremely infuriating.

One comment suggested telling him to redo it properly and for the woman not do it for him, as “he’s an adult and should be able to problem solve if he runs out of space”.

“Tell him you aren’t going to put up with that s***. Marriage is a partnership and you both have to do chores”.

One person jokingly asked if the wife had dated him for less than a full laundry cycle before deciding to marry him, as she seemed surprised by his laundry skills, or lack of.

People agreed it was poor form. Photo / Getty Images

Another suggested the wife should give her husband a good dose of “home truths” with a touch of sarcasm.

“Ask him, ‘Do you understand how physics works?’ Most blokes do. If there’s no air circulation, then stuff can’t dry. It’s science, but it’s not rocket science,” someone replied.

“Hand it back and say ‘try again’ then silently resent it every time,” another said.

One of the most upvoted replies came from a woman sharing her story about her teenage brother.

She said he’d piled up wet laundry on a clothes horse, just like the original poster. When she warned him not to do it again, he ignored her. So, she taught him a lesson.

“I decided to immediately fold his still-wet clothes and put them in his drawer,” she explained.

“All his clothes were musty and damp the next day. He got very mad at me, but he learned to do it [hang clothes out] properly after that.”

Commenters suggested various approaches to tackle the husband’s behaviour. Photo / Getty Images

Meanwhile, much of the discussion turned to the idea of “weaponised incompetence”, a psychological term that has gained popularity in recent years.

It describes a tactic where someone pretends to be unable or does a task poorly to avoid responsibility and shift the workload on to others.

In light of the woman’s recent post, many comments saw this scenario as “weaponised incompetence at its finest”.

“He intentionally did that so you don’t ask him to do it again in the future,” one user pointed out.

“Your husband is clearly trying to get out of doing things and doesn’t respect you,” another said.

There were also some surprised comments about the husband’s larger T-shirts and jumpers being hung properly on individual rails, while everyone else’s clothes were just thrown on to the rack.

However, while most criticised the husband, one person suggested a proactive approach: “After seeing this, go to him and say, ‘Hey, babe. I didn’t realise you didn’t know how to hang laundry’.”

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