Arr, You’re A Liar, Matey!
“I work at a daycare. If a child is sick, they will be sent home because we don’t want to risk infecting the whole class (generally happens anyway). A lot of parents don’t agree with this policy, which leads to them arguing with us that their kid isn’t sick when they obviously are.
My favorite time this happened was when a mother dropped her little boy off in an eye patch. Yep, the toddler was wearing an actual eye patch. I ask what happened, and she says he hit his eye or something, which I didn’t really believe.
She says whatever I do, don’t take off his eye patch. I pick him up and immediately lift up his eye patch…pink eye. She was soooo mad at me for doing that and was completely shocked I did it. Although I got yelled at by my supervisor for doing it, the look on her face was so satisfying.”
Transplant Faceplant
“I used to work at a grocery store. One of my coworkers was constantly calling in sick, claiming she had one illness or another. Management couldn’t just fire her for it, as it was a union shop, so she had protection unless she could be caught in a blatant and indefensible lie.
One Friday I get phoned in to cover her shift because she’d called in claiming she was very sick and needed a kidney transplant. During her next shift on Monday, she’s wandering around with gauze wrapped around her stomach and back, claiming that she had that kidney transplant over the weekend and that she had been so sick that they rushed her into surgery and put her at the top of the transplant list!
When she tells me the tale, I stop her and say, ‘Isn’t the recovery time on a transplant at least a month or two? The hospital shouldn’t have let you out.’ Realizing I’ve caught her in a lie, she rushes to the front desk, claiming she shouldn’t be here and that she needs to go home or she’ll pop her surgery stitches. A few days later, she was fired when she couldn’t provide proof of the surgery. She also tried to sue but no lawyer would take her case. It was hilarious.”
Nice Try, Boss
“I travel for work. 90% of the time I park in economy at the airport (around $14 per day) which is about a 10 to 15 minute walk. A few times, out of necessity to catch a flight, I park in the garage (around $24 per day) which is a 5 minute walk. The trips are usually 2 to 3 days, so it’s not a huge expense.
My boss suggests I park in off-site shuttle parking (about $11 a day, but a huge pain as you need a bunch more time to plan for the shuttle). He said he does it because it’s cheaper for the company (which he owns).
One day while walking through the garage from economy, there in the reserved parking (closest and like $40 per day) is my boss’ truck. Reserved takes planning, so he wasn’t just running late and needed to park in the garage to make a flight.
I simply put my business card under his wiper. I never brought it up, and I haven’t heard any complaints about parking on my expense reports since.”
A Familiar Sounding Tale
“One day at work, a coworker started telling me and another coworker a story about being stopped by the police. He went into great detail about how he stopped at a gas station for a drink, and there were two cops standing out front and nobody else in the parking lot.
He gave the cops a wave, being nice, bought his drink, and left. Less than a hundred feet down the street, these same two cops pulled him over. They told him that they smelled weed when he got out of the car.
He asked the cops if they could smell it now, standing next to his open window. They said no, but it was obvious it came from him. They asked if they could search his car, which he angrily let them do, saying he wanted the cops to climb through his hot car to find nothing.
While one cop did the ‘search,’ the other cop told him to calm down because he looked nervous. To which he said, ‘I’m not nervous, I’m angry. You didn’t smell weed, you smelled a shaved head and tattoos.’ The cops found nothing and let him go about his business.
This was MY story. It happened to ME months before, and I told that story at work back then. He even quoted me, except I said ‘long hair and tattoos.’ A few minutes into the story, my other coworker and I start giving each other the side eye, realizing he was literally telling me my own story. I think he realized it towards the end because he quickly finished up the story and left without ever mentioning it again. We never brought it up either, I had such a bad case of second-hand embarrassment for the guy. Plus everybody else already heard about it, and he was forever branded a liar.”
It’s His Time Of The Month
“One of my staff (who is, unfortunately, family with the owner so he’s not getting fired anytime soon) is the biggest liar I have ever met. We’ll call him Jim. He lies about everything, regardless of importance. He’s been caught in lies multiple times, and really just doesn’t care.
If someone is sick, guaranteed he will be off the next day having ‘caught’ whatever someone had. My whole department is female (5 of us) except for him. One day, almost all of us were suffering from some horrible period cramps. Everyone was complaining about the pain, but no one said it was because of their period, because it’s usually pretty obvious why.
The HR department has a wonderful supply of meds, and so I had to empty their stock of Midol and heat pads. Some of the staff was teasing that they’d bring chocolate as a peace offering before entering our department.
The next day he emails in that he’s sick and had caught the horrible stomach bug all the ladies in the department had. He’s so sore he can’t move, has a migraine, blah blah blah.
Word spread quickly, and Jim has forever been mocked as the dude who had to take time off work for his period. He won’t be let go, but he does get his pay docked when he flakes off like this. It was worth it to be able to make fun of him forever.”
Don’t You Know How Libraries Work?
“I’m a librarian and this happened back when I was in charge of the cinema and music section. This guy came with his son and asked me where to find our Puff Daddy CDs. We had one, so I show him where to find it on the shelves. Then I was called to another place in the library and go check on my colleagues.
On my way back to the music section, I see him coming out of the library and I don’t know why (maybe he seemed dodgy), but I have a feeling something is wrong. I go check, and the CD is gone. It’s not appearing on his library card, so he didn’t borrow it. I recheck to make sure he didn’t misplace it, but it’s not there.
The guy just stole the Puff Daddy CD, WITH HIS 8-YEAR-OLD SON, from a public library…where you can borrow it for free. At this point, I do nothing because we have no proof and no security camera.
A few weeks later, the son and his sister (8 and 10 years old) come to the library again and borrow some CD. I’m watching them, and to my knowledge, they didn’t steal anything, plus I don’t want to confront them because it would break my heart to have them stop coming to the library because of their father’s idiocy.
But the whole thing still bothered me. So, a few months later, I decided to try something. I still had the stolen CD barcode, and I just decided to add it to their library card, as if they borrowed it. Worst case scenario, they say they don’t have it, I apologize and say that it’s a mistake by the library.
A few days later they arrive, borrow some stuff, return some, and just before leaving, I proceed to explain to them that they still have an item, a ‘Puff Daddy CD,’ that they need to return. The look of panic and incomprehension in their eyes was just delightful.
They didn’t say anything, and a few days later they came back with the CD. I don’t really care about Puff Daddy, and we could easily have replaced it, but just for the principle, it was one of my greatest victories.”
Rich Witch
“I work in the custom framing department at a craft store and there’s this one woman who always talks down to all the employees. Her husband is rich and she shouldn’t be kept waiting blah blah blah (she was waiting for like five minutes because I was helping another customer), so she just keeps trying to get ridiculous discounts.
This glass has a scratch on it? Oh, sorry, I’ll just replace it real quick. Nope. She wants to be upgraded to museum glass (a $90 difference) because I made her wait a few minutes to fix a scratch that only she could see. I’m pretty sure she got off on being a witch, because I can’t understand why she would come back several times for different pieces if I was really such a terrible worker.
Anyway, she came in one day with a painting she wants reframed. She emphasizes that it was her grandmother who painted it, and it has such sentimental value. Also, her grandmother was a professional painter, so it’s probably worth like, so much money.
It’s a generic painting of flowers in a vase, and I’m like 80% sure at that point it’s not really that old. She’s just playing it up so when she gets the art back she can point out a flaw in it that we caused and she can demand we give her the whole frame for free.
So I’m taking the canvas out of the old frame and she’s reminding me that it’s super valuable, when I take the dust cover off the back, and lo and behold, there’s a sticker already there. Clearance: $19.99. I wish I had a photo of her face when she saw that.”
Half-Wit Hypocrites
“I was in a large business meeting, boardroom style. Something had gone wrong on a project my company did. The executives were nervous as heck because we were being blamed for a failure and the client was demanding we pay for it.
The thing is, I was the project manager for this job and had recently been promoted. I warned the client about a potential problem when the project was underway, but they chose to ignore it and press on. Now that it was failing, they wanted us to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix it, and our competitors were already about to take the next multi-million dollar project.
So the client’s manager outlines his case and asks when he can expect us to fix it for him, assuming we’ll just cave in hopes of getting future business (that’s my company’s MO). They even said that our on-site rep should have caught the problem, so this whole thing was our fault. They claimed our project manager clearly didn’t know what he was doing, otherwise he would have caught the issue.
My boss was about to respond, but I gently interrupted. I basically said, ‘I was the on-site project manager, and I did catch the problem immediately. I have a few documents for your perusal.’ I had with me the printed email exchange where I warned about the problem and advised how to fix it, as well as the clients very clear response that they thought it was worth the risk and wouldn’t change anything.
The client’s face turned red. Despite all of this, end the end we paid 1/2 the repair cost and took it off the top of our bid for the next project which they gave to us. Business…”
‘You Told Me So’
“I had a boss who kept getting angry at me because I ‘wasn’t doing what (he) told me to do.’ After a while, I finally decided to start writing down exactly what he told me, dating it, and keeping record of it.
Then one day came where he inevitably asked, ‘WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING?!’
‘Exactly what you told me to do.’
‘I NEVER TOLD YOU TO DO THAT!’
‘Well, I have it written here…’ I pull out my note card: ‘On 5/22/16, you told me specifically to do this task, exactly like this, and never any other way.’
I finally won. I started standing up for myself a bit more in the office, and I was respected for it.”
Don’t Mess With Tech
“I was working in tech support at an internet service provider on the afternoon/evening shift. It’s a smaller ISP, so tech support all sits in one office about a stone’s throw from each other. In the evening there are only 12 people working until about 7 pm, when it drops to 7 people.
One night we get a call from a kid (sounded about 12) who was using a deep voice, trying to get info on an IP address from us. It’s not uncommon for kids who are gaming to call tech support to try and get information so they can hack someone they are mad at.
The first person he got followed protocol and asked if he had a warrant, then hung up (we can’t give out that type of information to anyone without a warrant). Same thing happened to 3 other people over the course of about 15 minutes before he changed up his act.
Then I got him, and he said that he was agent something-or-other from the FBI, and he needed info on the IP address. I played along and asked him if he had the account info he was looking for. At that point, he panicked and said I should have it, and John in customer service should have sent it to me.
I informed him that there isn’t a John in customer service. He was quiet for a few seconds before he tentatively tried another name, and I told him I knew that person. He got super excited, and it was kind of funny listening to him think he was getting through. I asked him for the account info because that person had not sent it to me, and the kid hung up.
The next few attempts were the kid pretending to be one of my coworkers and telling people to give him the info. Granted this was at about 8:30 pm and that specific coworker had gone home at 7. At that point, we were getting annoyed and just hung up on him whenever we heard his voice.
As 9 pm rolled around, one of my coworkers was very upset that she hadn’t gotten him yet, because she had this whole plan on what she was going to say to him. I was super excited a few minutes after 9 when we all heard her yell across the office, ‘I GOT THE IP GUY!’ We all went on break or put calls on hold to come listen to what her plan was.
The kid was pretending to be our coworker again, which was very funny for us because the person he was talking to sits right next to the person he was imitating. She acted like she was going to give him everything, he gave her the IP address he wanted info on, and she got him to sing like a bird on what he was looking for.
After about a minute she said, ‘Thank you sir, we just finished tracing your call and I am required to inform you that a member of the FBI will be swinging by shortly to pick you up to answer some questions.’ We could hear the kid flip out for a few seconds over her headset, and then he hung up. We all lost it, as it was the funniest thing we had all seen in a while, and we didn’t hear from him again.”
Not His First Rodeo
“I used to work at a gas station and was really strict about IDing for age-restricted stuff. One day, a girl was adamant that I had IDed her the other day.
‘I have never seen you or your ID before.’
‘I was in here yesterday!’
‘Yesterday meaning Monday?’
‘Yes!’
‘Around this time?’
‘Yes!’ She starts getting excited because it seems like I believe her.
‘Nice try. I don’t work Mondays. Get out.’
The people waiting in line told me that was the funniest thing they’d seen in a while.”
He’s Been Everywhere, Man
“I once had a coworker who was a military retiree and claimed to have been everywhere. Someone might say, ‘I spent a week in Cambodia…’ and he’d reply, ‘Yeah, I was there once. Stopped over on my way to Thailand.’
We figured he was fibbing most if not all the time, so we started inventing places. ‘My cousin is traveling in Argentina, and he’s at this mountain village called Burritosalsa…’
‘Oh, yeah. We did a joint military exercise with Argentina back in the ’80s and stopped off there.’
‘Did you visit the temple on Blueberry Hill?’
‘”Of course! Everyone in my outfit visited!’
Total lier.’
A Bold Attempt
“I was the night time manager of a fast food place, and I religiously checked the time clock when I came in to make sure everyone was being paid to work (teenagers forget to clock in quite often) and see who took breaks, etc.
I came in one day and noticed that someone was on the clock since 6 am (it was around 4 pm) but wasn’t present. So I checked the printed schedule to see if there were any details to this. He was sent home sick at 6:20 am, initialed by the manager I was relieving. Ok, no big deal. I clocked him out at 6:20 am, and thought that was the end of it.
The ‘sick’ employee came in at around 4:30 pm to pick up his friend. Again, I didn’t think a lot of it, but I did notice that he went into the back drive-thru booth, which he had no business doing. I wasn’t immediately able to address that fact, but when I took my dinner break around 7 pm, I checked the time clock to make sure all was well with my employees and their money. I noticed that he was clocked in from 4:30 pm, after being clocked out at 6:20 am.
The first thing I did was print the screen. The second thing I did was clock him out. Third, I called the general manager. We had been looking for a reason to fire this guy for a while, but the paper trail wasn’t quite good enough yet. Until I checked the time clock and saw him trying to steal time. Immediate dismissal.
Sure enough, my GM and DM checked the cameras, he went back into the drive-thru booth to ‘clock out’ from his 6 am shift. He tried to deny it, but my insane need to cover everyone’s butts when it came to the time clock, and the fact that all the registers were camera covered, sealed his fate.
He tried to say that I altered the time clock, but he forgot that we keep handwritten notes on the schedule. The manager I relieved that day was always overly detailed with her notes. Seeing him cry was so satisfying.”
Watch Out For Yourself
“I had strep throat, so I called in sick to work. I was sick two days. My new manager called me and said I had a pattern of abusing my sick time, and that I would not be paid for my sick leave.
She explicitly mentioned that I always called three days in a row and that I had exceeded the acceptable amount of occurrences for the year. This was in October, I had a sick kid in February for one day, she started in June, so where was she getting this pattern from? I had three days over two occurrences for the entire year, both with doctor’s notes and well under the five occurrences (each with up to three days sick) that HR puts a soft limit at.
Unluckily for her, I knew our schedule tracking system and how to access my punched/missed hours. I also knew our policy regarding sick time and how abuse was handled, so I printed the policy and my last four years of attendance (along with my coworkers).
I sat down with her, and she reiterated the accusation of abuse. I pulled out my last year’s attendance with two calls on it. She said the pattern was from before she started, so I pulled out the previous four years and the policy (10 occurrences over four years, remember that HR calls violation over 5 occurrences within one year).
She said that I had more sick calls than anyone else, so I pulled theirs out too, and I was actually on the lower half of occurrences. My sick bank was near capped out. How would that be possible if I was a flagrant abuser of the system?
The backpedaling started. She said that she never stated I wouldn’t get paid. I pulled out my phone and played the recording for her; she thought my number was a landline and said I wasn’t allowed to furnish cell phone messages while at work. I told her I get paid or I quit over hostile work environment, which would mean a very easy unemployment case, which would actually have to be paid out by my employer in this case, and my manager would be cooked. I got paid for my sick time, and she made the next three years absolutely miserable for me. So, unhappy story overall, but I’ll still never forget the incident.”