The Vine: October 29, 2008
Dear Sars,
I have reason to suspect my one of my coworkers is a pathological liar, but I can’t be sure.
I’ve worked with Cait for about four years, andwe’ve become friendly.Out workplace is small, and during our busy season, the stress fosters a “comrades-in-arms” feeling that has made us all closer than just colleagues.We’ll go out in groups once a month or so, and lend around books, and watch each other’s pets during vacations, and talk about our lives.
Cait is a couple of years younger than me, very smart, hardworking, and accomplished.Up until a few days ago, I knew her as someone who’d been battling a serious disease for more than a decade, paid her own way through school in a variety of interesting, anecdotal jobs, now works two jobs, sometimes seven days a week, while she completes her PhD, teaches a dance class once a week, is paying off her father’s credit card debt after he died so her mother wouldn’t have that burden, etc.
She supposedly has led a very interesting life, but her stories of things she’s done or people she knows are not told in a boasting manner, and her stories of things she’s been through aren’t told in a way that feels calculated to win sympathy, although that is the result.
A few months ago, Cait’s stepfather died, and she flew home for the funeral.Cait had previously told me a complicated story about her real father, who was high-ranking military officer who’d immigrated to the U.S.from Europe when he was a teenager and changed his name, and she spent her childhood living on military bases with him, and he died from complications to something he was exposed to during the first Gulf War. Her mother had married his best friend after she was widowed.
The thing is, when I sent flowers, I found that her supposed stepfather had the same last name as Cait, the name she’d made a point of telling me was what her real dad had changed his name to when he got here.
Two days ago, over dinner with a mutual friend and former coworker, I brought this up. (Cait was not there.)Laura is closer to Cait than I am, and she told me that Cait lies a lot, mainly out of insecurity.What she brought up as an example was an academic conference in a different state Cait said she went to a few months ago, she came back with stories about how the paper she had presented had been selected for an award. Laura told me that Cait had told her she was going on vacation with a friend, but was telling our employer that it was a conference so that she could get the time off.
She said that Cait seemed to have forgotten that she told her the truth, and went on about the conference to her when she got back, which hurt Laura’s feelings.I remember that conference, which came at a busy time, and we all scrambled to cover Cait’s workload, but we were proud that she’d done so well.
In light of this I’m starting to wonder whether anything Cait’s told me is true:her perfect score on the SATs, her former-model mother who supposedly was nearly 50 when Cait was born, her year teaching at sea, anything about her childhood, even her illness. I look back and some of the things she’s said do seem really preposterous now, although at the time they were believable because they came from someone I trusted.
None of this has affected me personally, really, but I feel confused and betrayed.I sort of idolized her, and now I really want to know if any part of my picture of her is based on reality.I can’t ask her, because if she’s a liar she’ll just lie, and if she’s mostly truthful, well, how hideous it would be to falsely accuse someone of faking their cancer for sympathy.
This is eating at me, more than it should.If there’s a question in here somewhere, I guess it’s just, how do I let go of this?Is there a way of maintaining a friendly working relationship with this person when there’s a chance she has made up so much of her life?
Walter Mitty’s Office Mate
Dear Mate,
A friendly working relationship, of course there is.Remain cordial; keep the relationship work-based, and at work.
As far as letting go of it, that takes time.You feel like you got duped into respecting someone, based on information that you now suspect is false, and of course you could do some creative Googling and see for sure if she’s making shit up, but you have to ask yourself if you really want to know that.If she’s lying about work stuff, you may want to know that, because it’s unprofessional and it does affect you directly.The rest of it speaks to a more general insecurity and failure to observe basic social ethics, and while it’s not irrelevant at work, getting mixed up in it isn’t going to help you in any way, or right any injustices.It’s just going to get you mixed up in it.
You sound like you want it settled one way or the other — she’s a liar or she’s not — and I don’t blame you, but it’s probably best if you make a note to self that she’s not necessarily trustworthy, and step back from her a bit in the future.It doesn’t seem like you spend a ton of strictly social time with her, so keep it professional between you and make an effort not to turn every interaction with her into an attempt to catch her out.I mean, yeah, if she is lying about everything, that’s fucked up, but policing that if it’s not work-related is not a good use of your energy.
Dear Sars,
Here’s a smallish question with large implications.I am recently unemployed, and looking everywhere for a new job.I’ve registered with an employment agency in my city, and feel fairly confident about my agent and the opportunities out there.Also, I’ve applied to two dozen or so positions I could see myself really enjoying on a long-term basis, with professional contacts in many cases to get my back.
Here’s my problem.For various reasons, I need to see both a psychiatrist and a therapist on a regular basis.The psych, I could see once a month; the shrink, ideally every week.In my former jobs, I had hours that allowed me to schedule appointments rather easily; I worked later in the day, could arrange client meetings accordingly, et cetera.In my future mystery job, especially one procured by said employment agency, I imagine my schedule will be classic American 9-to-5.
How does one ask a new employer for (weekly) time off?If I were to see my therapist as early in the day as possible, that would mean I still wouldn’t get to my office before 10, or much later, depending on the location of my job.If it turns out I get an office support job (not my first choice, but beggars can’t be choosers), I doubt most employers could spare an hour, let alone an hour every week.I’d put this on the back burner — I need a livelihood and money, after all — but mental health, too, is sweet like the fruits of Guatemala.
Thanks,
Not Crazy About Scheduling Brain Time
Dear Brain,
Do therapists where you live not take evening patients?Maybe it’s just New York, but I don’t think half the therapists here even bother coming to the office before 5 PM.It’s not always possible to move your weekly appointment, but your first move is to ask your therapist and psychiatrist whether they have extended hours that might accommodate a more traditional 9-to-5 setup, or if they’d consider doing phone consults every now and then.
Or maybe you can work something out for the lunch hour.Either way, the issue here is that you are in fact asking; I don’t know the law, but I suspect that employers don’t have to accede to this type of request unless you furnish proof that it’s medically necessary, and perhaps not even then…so you may have to wait a month or two until things settle down, and then check with HR or your manager and see if there’s some flexibility there.
That’s provided you choose not to tell prospective employers up front that you will need these times available to you, which you could also do.I know it’s a tough economy and you don’t want to jeopardize your chances before you even get a second interview, but unless it’s a job where you must be present during certain hours — you work at a bank or a retail location — making it known, without going into detail, that you have various doctors’ appointments and would appreciate some flexibility shouldn’t present a huge stumbling block for most employers, provided you also make it known that the flexibility goes both ways, i.e. you will work late/weekends to make sure everything gets done.
But you may not have to tell them anything; most of the workforce has to do all their personal business after 5 PM, and everyone from dry cleaners to psychologists understands that, so see if your doctors can offer you that flexibility first.
Dear Sars,
I have a rather strange pickle that begs your wise attention.To explain: Years ago, in 1995, I had a good friend named Janice.Janice was only in my life for a little over a year before her husband got another job and she had to move away, but it was one of those deals where we grew insanely close insanely quickly, and she had a huge impact on my life.(I was 19, she was 40…sort of a sister/mother figure, and I absolutely idolized her.)
When she moved away, we both cried and promised to write and visit et cetera, and I did hear from her a couple of times, but then our communication kind of petered out.This was a couple of years before the internet was a viable communication tool for those of us out in the sticks, so it took a little more effort to keep in touch, and I just figured she was busy.Long story short, life went on, I grew up, got married, got boring, and never heard from her again.
Over the years, I’ve thought of her a lot.I still feel her influence and the effect she had on me, and I still miss her.Every once in a while, I typed her name hopefully into Google, as you do, but never really came up with anything — until last weekend, when I found her OBITUARY.
That in itself was like a knife straight through my heart, but what made it even worse is that she died in 1997, less than two years after we parted ways.She was only 42 years old.I had a really hard time processing the whole thing, and went through a couple days of heavy, tearful mourning.Even though I hadn’t seen her or heard from her in 11 years, I always figured she was out there somewhere, living a hopefully happy life, and maybe someday I might be able to find her again.
Not really thinking clearly (or, at least, not very compassionately), I started Googling around for her husband, Larry, whom I also knew and got on with very well.I knew he was a musician, and I discovered that he was playing little festivals around his local area with a quartet.Of course the quartet had a MySpace, so without really thinking about it, I added the quartet’s MySpace as a friend…not very clever of me, but my only defense was that I was grief-stricken and reaching out for something, ANYTHING that was a part of Janice.
The pickle is this: the leader of the quartet has now all happily messaged me (they only have 16 friends) wondering how I knew about them and their music.I have no idea what to say; I know that Larry would recognize me if he saw my picture, and anyway my profile mentions the name of the town we both used to live in, which is a very small place that not many people would know about.I could blindly hope that Larry would never see the MySpace, but I don’t think I can count on that.
The way I see it, I either have two choices: either I fess up and admit that I knew Larry though Janice, who I recently found out died 11 years ago so, I Googled his name and found his band and added them, which just seems horribly tacky and juvenile…or, I play totally dumb and say that I knew Larry and his wife from back when we lived in this little town, and isn’t it great, I’ve found them again!, which seems absolutely sacrilegious.
I don’t suppose there is any elegant way out of this.
Is there?
Thank you for your consideration!
Technology BAD!
Dear Tech,
Just tell him you used to know Larry’s late wife Janice.You don’t have to get into the recent particulars, and besides, there isn’t anything wrong with Googling friends from the past.It’s practically what Google is for.And not to put it too baldly, but…Larry knows Janice died.It’s been over a decade.You can safely assume that he has emotional mechanisms in place for dealing with the occasional reappearance of people from Janice’s life.
This isn’t actually a big deal.You feel like it is because you’re still dealing with your own emotions surrounding the situation, but you’re bringing a guilt and fresh anguish to it that, after 11 years, Larry is well past by now.And there’s nothing wrong with that, so give yourself a break, and just tell the truth in one sentence.Larry can handle it, and after a deep breath you can too.
Tags: etiquette friendships workplace
RJ, I’ve been thinking of that article the whole time I’ve been reading this thread! I was a little surprised at how easily they explained away her massive ruses by attributing them to bipolar disorder. None of the bipolar people I know happen to be compulsive liars, as far as I can tell, but maybe I just need to learn more about the disorder.
No doubt that this Glamour person, and the one in the Vine letter, probably do have a mental illness of some sort, but I hope articles like that one don’t start a whole new wave of misconceptions/assumptions, a la “schizophrenia = multiple personalities” or “Tourette’s = coprolalia.” In any case, Mate, I certainly concur with those who advise a work-only relationship, and a lot of smiling and pretending to listen.
What fascinates me about Vine letters (and other advice column letters) is that so often they could start with the first sentence or two, skip right to the last one or two, and that’d be enough to sum up the problem – but they’re so deliciously fun to read when we get all the juicy details in the middle!
I often wonder if people think I am (or was – I have a very boring life now) a pathological liar… I can tell you this much, I used to be much more skeptical and “yeah, right” about a lot of things I heard from others, until my own life started taking such weird (and frequently self-inflicted via stupidity and cowardice) detours. It makes for interesting recollections, but the downside is that now I’m much easier to fleece – I’ll hear something and think how ludicrous it sounds, but then remember when something equally ludicrous-seeming happened to me or someone in my family, and decide to give the person (who’s almost always lying) the benefit of the doubt.
Also, elisa – hey! Another El Pasoan on here!!
Isn’t it odd that we’re so close to a million people in population, yet such a “small town” mentality in so many ways? (Evidence my jaw-dropping surprise to see another El Pasoan on TN – no one I know uses the internet for anything more than email, news, and maybe concert tickets.)
“Pathological liars must be either mentally ill, have addictions of sorts, or just have tragically low self esteem – at least, that’s what I’ve surmised from reading these posts & other things.”
@RJ: Not all of them, in my experience. Sometimes they’re monsters, and the pathological lying comes to them like breathing. I know one, for certain. Lying comes to her like breathing. She lies about small things that don’t matter, and then the big things that do. She lies to get what she wants. She lies for the control it gives her about other people’s lives, and she lies to create havoc. (And no, Kathleen, this is NOT the same thing as saying you’ve seen Gossip Girl last night.
As it happens, my sister is bipolar, and she doesn’t have any problems telling the truth. Sometimes her perception and judgment may not be all that they should be, if she’s having problems with her meds, but it doesn’t make her a liar. And unlike the person I described above, she’s kindhearted and generous. So I’d say that your basic plan of “keeping distant” is very prudent. You don’t necessarily know what kind of liar you’re dealing with, once you discover you ARE dealing with a liar – and you don’t want to find yourself starring in one of his or her stories.
Ahhhh, good point on FMLA eligibility. I’ve forgotten everything I ever knew!
Interesting article here: http://tinyurl.com/yr6385
There is a big difference between pathological lying (what La BellaDonna’s talking about) and what Kathleen apparently suffers from – compulsive lying. The motivations and outcomes are very different. As other posters have noted, if Cait isn’t trying to manipulate you, scam money, or anything else of that nature, I think you can safely assume that she is a compulsive liar.
(Reiterate good advice of maintaining your distance here)
(Unncessary personal anecdote:)
I too have known (dated. zoinks.) a compulsive liar. He would lie about the color of your own eyes – and he too would become increasingly insistent when confronted with his falsehoods. He once claimed that he’d stolen a big laser out of the local science department at the state university and said he was going to put a hole in the State House roof with it. I think he’s probably a soiopath. His life has crumbled around him, though, and last I heard he spends most of his time living on the street now, so I’m mostly just sad for him.
Oops!
Not Kathleen. I meant SweetTart. That’s what I get for not scrolling back up to check my facts. Sorry, both of ya!
My old dentist in Philly used to keep early morning hours; twice a week, he took his first appointment at 7, which was great because you could pop in for a cleaning on the way to work.
I was “friends†with a compulsive liar in high school, and she had low self-esteem and was insecure and all that … but she was also not a good person. She mainly lied to get attention and sympathy; she was always inventing injustices or scares or dangerous situations (this guy had hit her, a party she’d gone to had gotten raided, a mentally ill neighbor had threatened her life). I think she also lied to make herself interesting; she wasn’t going to set the world on fire, and she knew it. She lied about things big and small, and you could say to her, “I KNOW you’re lying, I have you on film doing the opposite of what you said you did†and she would staunchly insist that she was not lying. The final straw was when she lied to her ex about being pregnant and having an abortion to get money from him. I cut her out of my life nine years ago and never looked back. I have very little patience for lying. If this were someone you knew socially and had invested a lot in, I’d say cut your losses, but since it’s a work friend, I’d just fully downgrade her to coworker and roll your eyes inwardly when she starts bullshitting. Unless her lying threatens your safety or your job, as noted.
Also, lying about having HIV is up there with lying about being raped as something you do not do, ever. No exceptions.
@K. – I have several friends who do police investigative work. One day, in the course of conversation, it came out that they have pretty much stopped automatically believing rape reports because so many people lie about it – out of all of the rape cases they’d investigated (they work in the same office), not even a third of them were real.
Sad.
@Mate: Ugh, I dated a guy like your coworker. Always the interesting stories, usually about people trying to mess with him and him putting them in their place (couple guys at the beach were harassing him, he said, so he karate-kicked their football right out of their hands and left them speechless…that’s not even the silliest story, and I can’t believe I bought THAT one.) He also: was a former SAR swimmer in the Navy (the Navy part I can believe, but I twigged onto the SAR swimmer part when at one point he said he’d rescued 12 people, and later said 5, and denied having ever said differently) once had a professional photographer convince him to do a photo shoot because of his model-perfect looks (ugh) helped perform CPR on a woman in a car crash and that was why he was late picking me up (uh huh) saw a homeless guy get run over right in front of him and that was why he was in a weird mood one night (…right), had a drunk break a pool cue over his back in a bar and then surprised the hell out of said drunk by shaking it off and kicking his ass (..yeah..) and almost joined his friend in Alaska to help him build his house when he was mad at me (the friend may or may not exist, but the bf made up a fake e-mail to convince me the story was true…)
Honestly, I told myself he just had an interesting life. And any ONE of those things is completely plausible. But over and over…took me a while to come to my senses. Now any time I hear someone telling ANOTHER story about ANOTHER wildly amazing thing that happened to them, I assume BS every time. And I don’t let it bother me, ’cause it’s not about me at all. I’m just another audience member in the stage drama that is their life. Sad, but interesting I s’pose.
@Krissa: that’s sad and horrible and utterly plausible. Of course. It figures. A lot of genuine victims never report what happens, because they’re traumatized by the experience, and don’t want to be traumatized further – and they don’t want to be disbelieved. Because of course, the compulsive pathological liars who want attention are busy reporting rapes that aren’t true.
Gaaaah.
In 1991, a few months after my sister was shot and killed, I was telling a casual acquaintance that my sister had been shot and killed, etc., and the acquaintance looked at my then-husband and asked him “Is this true?” I was furious, because, why would I make that up? Well, after reading about all the pathological/compulsive liars everyone has encountered, I get it. The acquaintance didn’t know me well and apparently knew people who made such things up. It was still horribly rude for her to ask that like she did, though.
The aforemention “then-husband” used to lie a lot, about stupid things, even things of no consequence. (What kind of church my mother went to, to someone who would never meet her, for instance.) Strange, because a lot of facts about his life are pretty interesting without embellishement.
Hi, guys — you are all fantastic! Thank you for all the great advice. I feel like a celebrity with my own personal team of experts.
In case you were wondering what became of me, well, I lucked the heck out. Shortly after writing to Sars, I got a 9-5 job in a public health nonprofit that knows the value of a flexible schedule for medical and mental health appointments. My therapist, miraculously, has an open appointment time for me at 6 p.m., and when I had to cancel last week because of a conflict, she made room for me early the next morning. I can’t believe how fortunate I am in this situation.
Some of you mentioned that I might look for a job with non-traditional hours. I appreciate that thought and definitely enjoyed that aspect with the 11-7, 10-6 or even 1-9 hours I worked in some old positions. But I prioritized jobs this time around that had pretty traditional hours for a copule of reasons, both mental health-related. It turns out that the sporadic hours really messed with my stability and balance; the best thing for this is to increase the amount of routine and predictability from day to day (not to the point of boredom, just to sooth those circadian rhythms). Also, getting out of work late or having to work weekends pretty much nixed any plans to become more active in my community, join groups, or really to have much of a social life — all of which can wreak havoc on just about any brain.
Even though I hit the jackpot this time around, I understand that a lot of people aren’t so lucky and so I think this conversation could have a really long reach if we let it. Making sure that FMLA is enforced WITHOUT REPRECUSSIONS in the workplace is as good a place as any to start.
Thanks again, everyone, for reading and writing back.