Husband refused to put groceries in place and insisted his wife do the work—she had a perfect response

When it comes to household chores, there is no allotment of duties, especially based on gender or roles. Seeing something that needs to be done in the house and attending to it is a basic way of life for all. A woman–who goes by u/SleepPleaseCome on Reddit–shared her exhausting experience with her husband after he refused to put away the groceries because he believed his wife should do it. Despite her effort to make him understand, he refused to budge. To teach him a lesson and put her foot down, the woman came up with a simple and on-point response.

The woman mentioned that she had gone grocery shopping with her husband, and then he left her at a nail salon. “I thought that since he went home, he would have put the groceries up,” she wrote. While it seemed like a trivial thing to do, the woman was stunned when she got back home and “saw that the groceries were on the kitchen floor still in bags.” “I asked him why he didn't put the groceries up and he argued that he put the cold stuff up, but he left the rest (majority) of the groceries in bags,” the woman noted. She further asked why he didn't put away all the groceries, but the man got agitated. “He got defensive and said, ‘It's always something.’ And that I act like he doesn't clean around the house/do stuff around the house,” the post revealed. 

After the passive argument, the woman took a stand for herself and decided she would not be “touching those groceries." The man went towards the area where the items were lying on the floor, and despite seeing them, he ignored them and refused to put them in place. The latter remained there for a while, and when the woman confronted him again, she received a worse response. “As he got in bed, he said, ‘Why can't you?’ then told me to f**k off. He's sleeping in the living room,” the post read. After feeling “disrespected,” the woman left the house for the night and ignored her husband’s texts. She later informed her therapist about the incident as well.

“I just learned that this is called weaponized incompetence. I'm glad I didn't take the disrespect lying down. That was highly disrespectful,” she concluded. The woman found many supporting her decision not to take the insult and negligence. They agreed with her decision to take a stand for herself and refuse to put up the groceries so her husband learned something of the situation. u/EnvironmentOk5610 said, “For you two to arrive at an agreement on the division of labor in your household, you need to talk to each other.”

u/Eureka05 added, “Who would put them away if he lived alone? Marriage isn't about perfectly sharing chores. It's about being a f**king adult.” u/Dajewida wrote, “That's super petty of him to turn it around on you. He's a grown man, he shouldn't need to be told to put things away. It's his house, his food, too. He, too, needs to be responsible for it all.” u/ItsAllMOThug remarked, “This isn't weaponized incompetence. He's just refusing to do something because he's being a baby.”