Bullshitter at work - could this be true?

Why would anyone “boast” about going almost double the speed limit and endangering others’ lives?!

Perhaps she's like my late mum. My mum has variously described herself as an accountant , actually (very efficient) book keeper. A legal professional (kept books in a solicitors office. A bank manager (managed a team of cashiers in a high st bank) and a company director (that one was tru-ish - a friend of hers set up on his own and she was named a director and kept his books for him).

The one that really annoyed me was when I got an MSc in psychotherapy after over 16 years of training and practice that started with a 6 week 'introduction to Counselling Course' with our local council. Years of studying and client work led on from there to a counselling certificate, then a Diploma to a degree to my eventual masters when I finally felt able to describe myself as a psychotherapist. Mum had completed the original 6 week introduction course nearly 20 years before, had never studied any further and certainly never got anywhere near a client but still would refer to her and me as "we therapists'.

She was a complete fantasist, not a former athlete. On first meeting she came across as very pleasant and believable, the lies weren’t too far out, or you’d reason why bother even saying it. The more you got to know her the more you realised she hadn’t done, or been to the places you spoke about in detail.
Nobody gave her any work, because you’d spend more time correcting the mistakes when you got it back.
I think she spent her days scrolling the internet reading up about different holiday destinations - she could even tell you what number bus to get, how much it cost etc
I do wonder if she had some kind of undiagnosed learning disability or other condition, she was harmless enough in small doses but very frustrating to spend significant amount of time around.

The reason is that I'm interested in the thread and am completely at liberty to post that someone has already made the useless, negative point that you did.

You didn't care enough to read the thread but you did care enough to make a pointless comment. Must be a reason for that too?

I'd tune her out really.

Even in the unlikely event she was let off for doing 120mph on the motorway, who would actually be proud to say that? It's an outrageous speed to do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factitious_disorder_imposed_on_self#:~:text=While%20Asher%20was%20praised%20for,the%20disease%20with%20the%20real

The original Baron von Munchausen was a fictitious teller of tall tales. The name was adopted for fabricated illnesses but has been dropped now. This lady did indeed fabricate illness, mostly in my BILs dog, by poisoning, which was very concerning. Her final illness was real and not fabricated and very sadly untreatable
I won’t add any more detail as it is too outing.

And it would be a very quiet one if people didn’t post stuff! This is an interesting thread, not trivial.

Same.

Felt scamming two as they had the van park RIGHT on the change of speed point when it goes suddenly from 60 to 30. Their proof was a sequence 3 photos took seconds apart where my break light are clearly on and I go from 34 to 32, to 31 just meters (literally like 3 meters) past the 30mph sign. I wasn't even in the village yet, it the warning to slow as you approach the village which comes out of nowhere.

Speed awareness course was useless. Their great insight was that I must have been in the wrong gear from driving on a hill. I pointed out I'm disabled and can only drive an Auto so have zero control of the gears. They said 'guess you should learn manual then'.

Lies damage trust. Depending on the nature of the working relationship, trust can be vital.
I worked with someone who was a fantasist. He was really likeable so most of us believed him at the start, then as time went on, we either indulged or ignored his stories. It later turned out that he was a massive thief and was caught stealing from the business (customer-facing cash handling). He blamed colleagues.
Such a dirty thing to do.

Behaviour like this woman's can be a sign of a damaged and/or dangerous person.

I have had a bunch of crazy stuff happen in my past that hardly anyone but my therapist knows all about because if i say it out loud i can barely believe it myself and think its like a really bad soap opera plot. This post has got me wondering if i would sound like your colleague if i verablised some of the shit that genuinely happened.

OP, i knew a friend of a friend like this (initial F?) - lawyer/dr/biz owner/heroine at a crime scene/drama drama drama follows her everywhere and she has to be the centre of attention in every room she enters ... the sort who'd wear a massive white gown to her best mates wedding.

Don't be ridiculous everyone is entitled to have an opinion EVERYONE and that was my ...wow enjoy your day

My Mum did have a bowel perf. It's when your bowel wall ruptures. Weeks in ICU, months in hospital, sepsis twice, a massive hole in her stomach that required a machine pumping fluid from her constantly for 8 months, stoma for life, had to live with us for a year and didn't get back to work for nearly 18 months, and every time she goes for a check up at the hospital they tell her how lucky she is to be alive.

You can't 'live' with a perforated bowel. If it's not operated on in literally minutes you're dead.

She eats normally now, though.

I get that, but that still isn’t Munchausens unless she was actually making herself ill in some way.

Saying you are ill while being perfectly healthy is batshit- but unless you’re inducing symptoms it isn’t munchausens.

we usually do these to check which part of the brain we are working on. not for the patient to direct the surgery.

but theoretically someone medically qualified who is undergoing a simple procedure under very low sedation might be able advice or chat the surgeon. eg. I had my fistula for dialysis done by a colleague and I chose to be awake with local only and had a good old natter about the anatomy of my arm and and what he was doing (I wasn't so presumptuous as to give him advice God forbid!). but if a senior surgeon was having a procedure done by a junior one, I could see this happening (not saying that is what happened in OP's colleagues case). I have at times had to take my own blood/put cannula in when more junior colleagues were struggling as I have very poor blood vessels.

when patients have surgeries under spinal or regional blocks we keep them updated as to what is happening and might ask their consent about parts of the procedure. someone with a sense of self inflated ego could interpret this as "telling the surgeon what to do".

Obviously she means she “cried wolf” three times, then sadly really did have cancer. My cousin was like this. She was constantly saying she had serious illnesses (brain tumours, cancer of the liver, AIDS, MS) then when she genuinely did fall ill with a heart problem initially no one believed her.

Because when people make derogatory comments like that, it’s against the spirit of the page and it puts people off posting.

That isn’t Münchausen’s if she actually had cancer and died from it- you can’t self induce cancer.

I had a SIL like this who was allegedly a Casualty Sister, a magistrate, a candidate for the European Parliament, owned black horses for a celebrity funeral business, had a narrowboat and three kitchen/ bathroom shops. She worked in a care home though. She had had cancer three times cured without surgery or chemotherapy. Sadly she actually got a real diagnosis and died and even more fabulous facts emerged. We had considered hiring a detective to sort out the truth but BIL was so happy with her it seemed cruel and unnecessary. We just eye rolled and took the piss when we got home.
I think it’s Walter Mitty/ Münchausen syndrome a bit like Donald Trump. They end up believing their own stories. The time to worry is when her DC starts showing mysterious symptoms that could be Fabricated Illness.

I’ve worked with different variations of this type of thing. At its worst a woman who reported me for lots of weird made up fantasies of hers. It was so awful, pushed me right to the edge.

Then one where she couldn’t help it and was diagnosed with a psychotic disorder.

Another where she’d grown up with DV and I think lying=survival. And it became habitual maybe?

I just nod with the milder types and grey rock the first type.

also certain brain surgeries are done awake with patient involvement

But how likely is it that a patient would be able to tell the neuro-surgeon how to do the job?

We have different ideas of fun.

Hahaha tell Sandra I said hi! Last time we spoke she was organising the Oscars…

Ive worked with someone the same, but she was so extreme than no one go sucked in thankfully! She was a temporary PA and when she was let go she actually offered one of the Directors a Job on the board of her ‘new business’, before she was escorted from the office 😂

DP was bollocked and had no charges after an unplanned race with a BMW x5 with blacked-out windows, reaching speeds over 100mph on a local bypass. The car turned out to be occupied by armed police officers.

His mate called him (A police officer) a couple of hrs later asking what the chuff DP.😂