Incompetence Part 1 - How It Manifests

The idea of being incompetent isn’t something people usually think about when it comes to men.

Instead of saying, “You’re incompetent.” They say, “You're a boy, not a man.” Or, ”You're not doing your job.”

For years, I thought I was doing fine. I went to Calabar High, a respected all-boys school. I was seen as smart, quiet, and dependable. At work, people praised my intelligence and my work ethic. I even ran a freelance business from home. My ego was blazing. I thought I was untouchable.

Sure, I had flaws — like not being strong physically — but I never saw them as real weaknesses. It wasn’t until my thirties, when I started working in wholesale and retail, that reality hit me.

How did I not see it sooner?

Different environments.

In my earlier jobs, I was always part of a team. If I lacked skills, I could hide behind the workload of others. But Wholesale? That industry is a different beast.

There, individual ability matters. No hiding. No excuses. And my incompetence showed.

I remember my boss asking me to reset the password on her laptop. I’d bragged before about being good with computers.

On the spot, I froze. I stalled, mumbled something about needing to grab a tool. Truth was, it was a Windows 10 laptop, and I was out of practice.

Later, when I tried to help a co-worker, my boss cut me down immediately: “You can't figure out nothing. Not even a laptop. Stay whe’ you da.”

Damn.

That stung.

I got called out.

And it wasn't the only time.

I couldn't lift a one-hundred-pound bag of rice, and I made constant mistakes with bills.

Customers called me “slow.”

The criticism was relentless. Even as a writer who takes hits from beta readers, I struggled with this kind of attack.

What made it worse was that I’d always looked down on the industry. To me, wholesale and retail were beneath me — the Jamaican equivalent of working at a fast-food restaurant in the U.S. Failing at something I had dismissed as “easy?”

That broke me.

And it wasn’t just work. Around that same time, one of the manosphere creators announced he was leaving the space. He called it a swamp — criminals, liars, grifters. He said the men there were posers. Like teenagers with skateboards, dressed in the gear, but unable to skate.

I puffed my chest out and agreed. Yeah, those guys were the problem. Not me.

But then, wholesale work stripped my ego. And I realized that what that creator said—it applied to me.

I was the poser.

That’s the power of ego — it tricks incompetent men into thinking the criticism is always about someone else. It usually takes a brutal fall from grace for the truth to sink in.

And the truth was, I caused damage. To my household. My community. Even to my country, in small ways.

Just like in a story, one incompetent character can derail another’s journey. Multiply that across society, and when incompetence rises to the top, it can destroy whole nations. Just look at Trump.

So yes — they were right about me.

I was incompetent.

Are there areas in your life where you’ve had to face the same thing? Times when you had to admit weakness, maybe even incompetence? Which areas are those?