He’s not a “tool”, he’s a “resource.”
(From an old Dilbert cartoon.)
A tool is just an incredible dick.
No need to think about it so hard. It’s an insult, there’s no silver lining to it.
Wait, you mean it’s not universal that “tool” is a euphemism for “penis,” and that calling someone a tool is just a slightly more mixed-company-friendly way of calling them a dick? I thought that was obvious.
Gee, all these definitions (focusing on traits like “jerk”, “douche”, “asshole”) all beat around the bush of the actual meaning as I’ve always interpreted it. Only a few responses above have kinda-sorta touched upon the meaning I think it has, and what OP seems to mean too.
A tool, literally, is a device or implement with which one can get some useful work done: e.g., a shovel, a screwdriver, a lawnmower, a forklift, . . .
Calling someone a “tool” really means, or ought to mean, an easily manipulated person by which some other manipulative person can achieve his own ends. At least, this is the useful usage. Whether such a person is an obnoxious jerk is not the main point. A better definition might be Stalin’s famous phrase, a “useful idiot”.
So, OP, to spin this guy as a good guy, emphasize the “useful” part, and de-emphasize the “idiot” or “jerk” part. Emphasize how useful, helpful, cooperative he is, or focus on the team-work that you and he will do together (without mentioning, of course, that you really see the relationship as you manipulating him). So there really is a “good” side to being a “tool” – good for YOU, that is, if you are sufficiently adept at manipulating people like that.
Sure, that is perhaps logically what it “ought” to mean, but it almost never means that in my experience with the actual usage (which seems to have peaked in the 90s–I don’t hear that word all that often anymore.) I mean, yes, if it’s “he’s a corporate tool,” or something like that, sure, it has your type of meaning. But “tool” by itself I honestly cannot remember to mean “an easily manipulated person” except in specific contexts like the above.
Plus, there’s also the “tool” = “penis” way of interpreting the word (though I think “tool” for “penis” is more common in the UK, no?)
Agreed, what a Tool is depends almost entirely who is saying it. In general, though, it’s some brand of jerk.
That said, if you have to work with someone like that, it might be worthwhile to dissect the questionable behavior to try and guess where it comes from. Herr Tool might have some insecurity about getting undermined or backstabbed, or just has some other emotional soft spot. Easier to be abrasive and naturally repellant than to have someone get close enough to push those desperately guarded buttons. Or maybe he just doesn’t realize he’s a jerk. Could easily be he perceives himself as a decent guy surrounded by weirdos, and is miserable as a result.
A while back my wife got promoted and transferred to a new department at work, and she had received a dozen warnings about what a monster her new boss was. He evidently had been barred from having an assistant for the previous 12 months as a punishment for abusing the previous ones. Guy is a bear, overworks his people, sets them up for firing if he gets questioned, etc. Really wild stuff. She was nervous, but professional confrontation is kind of her thing and she had his boss watching her back as she started the adventure. After a couple days she came home and announced. “Nothing wrong with him, he’s just an Aspie.” Like our son. So she approached him the way we do our boy when we need something out of him: discussed procedures with him and wrote down expectations (for both of them) and division of work…left nothing open for interpretation and got his enthusiastic buy-in on everything. Created structure for him, for her, and the rest of the team. Where her predecessors went wrong was expecting him to process information, and respond to criticism/questioning like a ‘normal’ person, and to just “understand” when someone was feeling too put-upon. It’s been like 6 months now, and there is just success all around where everyone had been expecting a bloodbath. Moral of the story is: …well, I dunno. Something pithy, I guess.
I’m just not seeing it. Every time I’ve heard someone being called a “tool,” it’s the same kind of tone that would be used to call them a dick.
I don’t know the etymology for sure, I just thought it would be obvious to almost everyone.
I think that in this case “tool” is slang for penis. You know, the “tool” that hangs between a man’s legs. As in, “Wilt ‘the Stilt’ Chamberlain had one of the largest tools in the NBA*”, or equivalent. Basically, your friend is saying that this guy sounds like he is a “dick”, a “pecker”, a “tool”. Derogatory term for males; I’ve never heard it applied to females, but I’m old, who knows what these kids are up to nowadays.
Sometimes, a smart individual “who doesn’t suffer fools gladly” may be described as “a tool” by someone who has gotten on the wrong end of him. In this case, it sounds like your friend doesn’t know him, but was going from your descriptions of interactions. He was basically taking your side, as he should. So, it is meaningless to try to parse more information from your friend’s choice of words.
BTW, from your description, a guy who is “clueless” about a situation and defaults to hostility does sound like a “dick” or a “tool” to me. If you want to give him any benefit of the doubt, maybe he was caught off guard by the situation or had hopes for his own staffing solution, but you have been forced upon him unwelcome, and he is reacting poorly. If so, you may try to avoid surprising him, and keeping this very regular and predictable, as possible. But I don’t envy your situation. Some people really are just jerks, and you may be poison to him from now on- a real jerk will not allow himself to warm up to someone he initially dislike, as that puts himself in the wrong. Your best bet may to keep a diary and document all your interactions.
*Just a silly example sentence.
Boys in my high school in the 90s referred frequently to their penises as their ‘‘tools,’’ so yeah, I’m going with that interpretation.