My husband is great but there is one thing he does that I don’t understand. He will ask me what I want from the supermarket. I once asked for mozzarella. Came home and said “they don’t have it”. All supermarkets have them. I went later that day and found it in the usual cheese aisle.
Yesterday I asked for gluten free pretzels. I told him which isle it was in. Came home with gluten free sweet biscuits that neither of us eat. I told him what they were and he just said “oh well”.
It is like this all the time with anything supermarket related. Either whatever I ask for is not stocked or he brings home something completely different. I don’t know why he does this.
He can find something very specific in the mall (which is way bigger than a supermarket) for his mother. A specific set of make up brush by a specific make up artist.
Now that I think about it, a lot of things he can’t seem to do for me, he can for his mother.
Has anyone experienced this? I’m just going to not ask him to get anything for me anymore and go to the shops myself to get what I want. Seems like a weird way to go about it but I think that’s the solution.
EDIT: now he’s apparently got a headache and it’s all my fault 🤦♀️
Comments
He doesn’t want to get you things at the store so he’s being bad at it for you. Especially since he can do it for his mom.
He loves his mommy more than he loves you.
does he put this same low effort into his hobbies? how would his boss react if he pulled this at work?
My husband was sent to get breakfast sausage. He came home LIVID, claiming I was wasting his time because he went to two stores and neither carried breakfast sausage. I was told “This is California, people don’t eat that Midwestern shit here.” Of course, both stores have a huge section for breakfast sausage. Men are nuts sometimes.
You are correct, it is weaponized incompetence. He’s doing it to passive aggressively discourage you from asking him for things, or wants you to feel devalued. Or both.
Keep sending these stories.
Every time I feel ready for male attention I’m brought back to reality.
Thank you!
Treat him like a child. Send him for things more often and make him text a photo before purchasing. Tell him to ask for help.
Just divorce him
My dad “can’t” grocery shop either. (He doesn’t meal plan/cook, so he doesn’t conceptualize how ingredients turn into dinner.)
When Mom had major surgery, I did the grocery shopping. I was 12. Dad just came along because I couldn’t drive yet.
When I was in grad school, I lived in a food desert. To get groceries, I’d ride the bus 40 minutes to the grocery store near my dad’s office, load up on a month’s worth of groceries, and Dad would drive me home. Finals approached, and Dad offered to do the shopping for me so I could study. Cool. Not cool. He got none of the things on my list. (But I like this one better ! Why would you want that?! They’re the same thing!) he did get me lots of snack/junk foods though.
These days he’s a little better. He can cook about five meals, so he can accurately shop for the ingredients for those five meals
I asked my husband to get a block of cheddar, not pre shredded, from Trader Joe’s. He said there wasn’t any. There’s an entire section. When I order groceries to be delivered, I always worry when the shopper ends up being a guy. Sometimes it’s fine, but often times they say they store was out of something that I know full well they had in stock.
“MeN aRe ViSuAl CrEaTuReS.” Find the mozzarella in the cheese section then.
I find old married men staring at the shelves with a list in their hands all the time. I’ve saved many marriages by helping them out so that their wives don’t kill them.
You could try asking for a photo if he claims “they’re out”, it’s a step before having to take it over yourself. Or you could make the dish with the ingredients he bought. He brought home string cheese instead of mozzarella? Well it’ll be an interesting lasagna.
I’m a woman and hate grocery shopping for other people. Way to many choices and ways to screw it up. It can be very overwhelming, even with a list. Shopping online has been a godsend for my personal groceries, less screw ups for me that way too. You comparing him shopping for makeup brushes in the mall isn’t a fair comparison because it’s one thing in a store that is probably smaller than the grocery store. Easier to stay focused and he can ask for help from the makeup girl.
Sounds like it to me.
Just makes you more hot to get down, right??
(/s)
This may also be a level of store stupid. As someone who has worked retail(grocery specific), people are absolute idiots and get weird stressed at grocery stores. I’m not saying he is off the hook but he could be like a lot of other folks I’ve dealt with.
Part of it could be actual incompetence. Like, if he doesn’t know what mozzarella looks like, cause he never bought it for himself or saw the packaging, then finding it would indeed be hard. Especially if he looked in a dedicated cheese section, which to someone who has no clue would make sense as a spot to look for a cheese, generally does not have mozzarella (because its in another fridge next to other white cheeses).
My wife often wants me to buy things I never in my life thought to by for myself, and first attempts at such often end in failure.
He doesn’t really want to get stuff, he just thinks he has to ask. So he purs 1 minute into looking and gives up.
Also, the way mens brains work with focus, is literally like tunnel vision.
The eyes work fine, but their brain searches like a spot light. Women read the whole scene like gazing at a painting, all the parts are relevant by default, and we zoom in on details as needed. Guys start with a zoom on the most attention grabbing thing present.
The way to “fix” this is to train them to “read” the room, aisle, or shelf like a page with writing, left to right, top to bottom. Then SAY out-loud every item their eyes land on.
For example, you can open the fridge and find the short jar of mustard, by kind of taking it all in, and looking for any yellow that sticks out, that is the right size… then it can only be one of two items.
A guy will have better luck by “reading” the top shelf, starting at the left… I see butter, I see eggs, I see cream cheese, I see pickles, I see medicine… hmm, mustard is not on the top shelf… I will look on the middle shelf; I see leftovers, I see salad dressing, I see ground beef… I SEE MUSTARD!!! yay!
It works for any cluttered area. I’ll have my son “read the shelf” and it really cuts down how much I have to help him find things.
To be clear, I’m not saying for sure that he’s not doing anything wrong here. I don’t know the full story or background, this is simply one thing that crossed my mind and that I could personally relate to.
However – is it possible that he’s able to find his mother’s product because he’s bought it for her before (so already knows exactly what he’s looking for), and/or because she provided more specific details about the product (eg. an exact brand or even a picture, rather than just a description like “gluten free pretzels”)?
Perhaps it’s worth actually going on a trip to the store with him, not helping him out but just seeing what he does when trying to find things. Obviously – no one is born knowing how to find things in a grocery store, so this might shine some light on why he’s having trouble; sometimes things that seem “common sense” or second nature to most people can actually be really confusing or not “click” for people who’ve never really learnt them (even more so if neurodivergence is a factor, but to be clear, this can be an issue even for neurotypical people). Or conversely, if he suddenly seems perfectly capable when you’re around, that would definitely reinforce the theory that he’s just being slack (or worse) usually.
Possibly an idiot but more likely an asshole.
Just start sending him with a list and anything not on the list or not useful will be taken out of his budget.
Then send him back till he brings the right shit and doesn’t fuck up.
If he acts out then you probably should get out.
I am horrible at shopping cause I have no self control.
I am so happen when I stay under $100, I was only getting milk and cheese. Don’t grab a cart so I have to stop when my arms are full.
It might be actual incompetence
I have found this with men and also some women (if they don’t care that much): I hired a caregiving service after surgery last year and one or two of the women would do a great job shopping, but the other 2 or 3 would make a half-hearted effort, and come back saying, “They don’t have it.” It’s infuriating.
Next time he asks I might say nah, you don’t seem to know how to find anything I care about, it’s kind of a let down.
Yeah. He doesn’t care. It’s that simple. He just doesn’t give a fuck about you.
So when I was a teenager I figured out that I could just do a really bad job at cleaning the bathroom, and my mom would assign that chore to my brother instead of me. It was my least favorite chore, so any time it was assigned to me, I just did a really bad job.
That’s what he’s doing. He’s doing a really bad job so you don’t give him this “chore” again.
My husband is like that. In his case, I believe it’s undiagnosed ADHD. I make picture shopping lists for him. When I’m feeling especially sarcastic, I will include the picture multiple times to indicate quantity.
this is you and your husband? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhGTtWsW9F8
This is when you look it up on their app and tell him what aisle it’s in and send him back. And keep sending him back until he finds it. Make it no longer worth his lack of effort to play stupid.
This may be petty, but I’d let him lie in the bed he made for himself.
Didn’t get mozzarella? Pizza without cheese is gonna be a wakeup call.
Brought home the wrong bread? You’re getting sandwiches for lunch until it’s used up.
The store was “out” of ground beef and you couldn’t call me to discuss a substitute? Guess we’re going vegetarian temporarily.
Shop for yourself and keep the foods you like in a separate area of the kitchen where he doesn’t look (I’m hazarding a guess that he doesn’t do much in the kitchen anyway). If the communal supply of something is out, and you ask him to get more, and he gets the wrong thing or comes back empty-handed, then you can have some from your stash so you don’t suffer and he gets to go without (or go back to the store).
What supermarket is he going to that has islands? Mine are all laid out in aisles.
So now you are going to do all the grocery shopping. Hubby won!
About ten years ago I had a knee surgery. My husband asked if there was anything in particular I wanted from the supermarket, so I said cream cheese and raspberry jam.
He came home with cottage cheese (which neither of us eat) and strawberry jam (that I don’t eat). When I got upset with him about it he got upset with me because he was just trying to do something nice. In the end he went back out and got the right ones but the whole thing left me feeling really unimportant and then petty for saying no, the things you got were not what I asked for.
He’s much better about that now and it helps that with online shopping I can send him a link to the exact thing I want, but my dude. Just no.
Many years ago, my ex-husband went to the store when I was sick. His mission: canned chicken soup.
He came home with Amy’s “Vegetarian No-Chicken Soup.”
I couldn’t stop laughing. He got really pissed off.
He knows. He doesn’t care.
It’s incredible how [some] men can hold down jobs, remember sports stats from 1987, memorize maps from every video game they’ve ever played, play 280 songs from memory…but can’t manage to follow the most basic of requests from their partners.
not asking him anymore and going to get stuff yourself is exactly what he wants you to do. the reason he can do just fine for his mother and not for you is because you allow it. this being a pattern, i would tell him he is an intelligent and capable man, that this is disappointing, and i expect better from him. also i would send him back to the store for the right thing. if you don’t feel like you can do this amount of pushback safely then you probably have worse problems in this relationship than weaponized incompetence
Once I got super sick and after two days of retaining essentially zero calories begged my husband to go get me Pedialyte. He came back home with 7Up. I begged again for Pedialyte, explaining what it was and where to find it. Came home with nothing, said he couldn’t find it. Finally I was able to keep down enough rice to go out myself and get the GD Pedialyte, exactly where I said it was.
When my grandfather, a WWII vet, married my grandmother, he could barely boil water. By the time he died, he was able to make Sunday brunch for her. I miss that bacon.
My genX boyfriends – they could follow directions on cans and packages for microwaving. Put a meal together for more than themselves? HAH! Grocery shop for more than chips and dip and beer? HAH!
My ex husband (border boomer, genjones, genX) had no real skills in the kitchen when I met him. Sure he could boil water or microwave, but he couldn’t “cook.” Three years with him, and he spent some time as a prep cook so he was figuring out how to cook stuff and plate it restaurant style. If I sent him to the grocery store with a list, he only got what was on the list, and ONLY on the list. He never did figure out how to bake. I’m the one that put together holiday meals and more, even though he might have done the “cooking” by then cause I have a permanent injury to my hand. But he was sneaky about what he put into my meals and that’s part of the reason why he’s my ex. If I sent him to the grocery store, I couldn’t phone or text him anything additional because he wouldn’t get it. It was easier to shop as a family or without him than let him shop.
My second husband, a boomer, doesn’t really cook for himself or for me. In fact, he promised me that he will not force me to make a holiday diner, ever. So we go to a restaurant for that. Grocery shopping, he takes me along with him and I get the stuff I want and need, he gets the stuff he wants and needs. We have divergent dietary needs and because of that, what we each can eat is not necessarily compatible with the other’s needs. I sent him into wallyworld recently, and not only did I have to give him location and aisle descriptions for a hand soap he wanted, but which shelf and how far down the aisle to look, while I was in isolation for sepsis. He can not shop on his own and requires female guidance if it’s for anything out of his normal 5 aisle and back row items.
I think part of it is socialization, some of it genetics, and some of it latent abilities. Men can sit still for hours with no real thoughts in their heads because they were the hunter types of the tribes and not all of them came back alive, if they came back at all. Women, however, because the young were generally near us, would be constantly scanning and documenting what was around us for forage food, and because of that, we have an innate need to know what’s around the next tree, or aisle, and keep an updated inventory of what was around us.
Yes, grocery shopping is a skill that can be taught, but not all learn the lessons and it’s a lot more than “aisle, shelf, fridge, freezer or other location.” Or more importantly, they learn if they do it half-assed once, they will never have to do it again because you will do it instead, and yes, that is weaponized incompetence.
If he can do this for his mom, yes, it’s incompetence. The only grace I might give is that in mall shops, you are usually greeted and asked if they can help you find something. So he may just be walking into the shop and saying, “I need this” and having to do nothing after that other than making his way to the register and paying.
One of the things I love about being able to put together an online grocery order is that I can screenshot a product and text it to whomever is at the store. My sister and I do this for each other.
Passive/Aggressive. Get used to it because it will get worse.
My EX does this. Definitely intentional. Very passive aggressive. Will never ever discuss anything directly and feigns ignorance when directly asked. Very frustrating. I’ve caught him out multiple times and he lies to cover his tracks. I do it back to him and it stops for a while then when I go back to normal so does he ie back to incompetence. I had to break up with him too annoying to play games my whole life.
My dad is a boomer who still just “doesn’t know” where things right in front of his face are 🫣😪
The first one is *so* interesting.
What did he do before you met him? Did he ever cook a meal or shop for a meal? Did he ever live alone? Did he live on frozen pizzas? Did his parents take him grocery shopping when he was a kid?
How old is he now? Does he do something for work that requires him to use his brain? Is he able to hold a job, or does he get fired for incompetence?
This could be several different things.
Do you take him to the grocery store with you? Is he capable of finding the food *he* wants?
If he is genuinely neurodivergent, then he needs to take medication and see an ADHD coach to help him improve these skills.
If he has been able to find *cheese* in the grocery store before, then he’s just being a jerk, and it is worth interrogating why that happened.
FWIW, men seem to be *really* terrible at grocery shopping, even when it is their literal job. Every time I get a man as my Instacart shopper, he misses some things or tells me that they’re out of stock. When I go to pick up my order, I go in the store, walk right over to the item, and pick it up. It was never out of stock.
If I can’t find something, I text or call my wife and ask her where it is. Or if there’s a choice, I take a pic and send it to her. And if she doesn’t respond, I use my best judgement based on what I’ve learned. Which, admittedly, I get wrong sometimes.
But. In his defense, grocery stores aren’t always intuitive. I had a very difficult time finding soy sauce the other day. It wasn’t next to Worcestershire Sauce or any of the condiments (which would make sense in my brain.) instead, it was in some ambiguous, “Asian” section a few aisles over.
Or, I can be on the correct aisle and walk by the tiny box of beef bouillon powder 6 times before I actually see it.
A lot of the ingredients my wife will ask me to pick up are not typical things I shop for, so I don’t always now specifically where to find them.
It can be a very frustrating experience.
It sounds like your husband is a decent guy. I’d suggest reminding him to contact you if he can’t find something. Or even telling him the general area of a few items that you don’t usually get.
(And yes. He could always ask for help. But a lot of stores are so understaffed that it can be very difficult to find someone to ask.)
This is why a lot of women cancel their instacart orders when they realize their shopper is a man. They go through life being treated with kid gloves and they never develop the skill of follow through
Idea: can you get groceries delivered? We use instacart or Costco delivery almost all the time. It’s a bit more money but the shoppers are competent.
Then if your husband complains about the extra cost tell him “it’s better to get what we need and not extra stuff we won’t eat”.
I once dated a guy like this. Would go to five stores to find a specific coffee mug for mom. But wouldn’t order a book I wanted for my birthday if I sent him the link. I left. Not sure why he was like that but I wasn’t going to hang around to find out. He was clearly showing me that I was not a priority in his life.
Here I am with a man who makes sure he buys unscented sanitary pads for me because he knows I hate scented products.
Your husband doesn’t find it a priority to get what you want.
Sorry you have to deal with that.
He just doesn’t care about you
He cares about his mom