To want to pull up work bullshitter

[lastqueenofscotland]

I work with a really nice lady but she lies constantly about the weirdest stuff

She can’t drive which is fine but she recently found out she was pretty much the only person in the office who can’t so has started telling people she can drive but just doesn’t because her car is broken.

I’m from a tiny village in the highlands and someone who used to holiday there a lot asked me which one as they might know it.
She then claimed she lived there for a bit when she was younger. I brushed this off with “oh that’s nice” but wanted to say “no you fucking didn’t and last week you were telling everyone you’d lived in Wigan your whole life” and recently this week she’s telling people she grew up in Spain.

Every other week she’s claiming she has a different learning difficulty/disability/mental health problem (which as someone who has had issues with mental health I find fucking offensive.)

Then this week there seems to be something in the water as a few people in the office have announced they are pregnant. Inevitably she is now claiming she thinks she might be/her period is late, when a week ago she was being weird and oversharing how she hasn’t had sex this year

AIBU to tell her to shut the fuck up. I know other colleagues are annoyed too...

I used to work with a woman who was a compulsive liar, it was made worse by the fact that if say you were chatting to someone, she would come over and butt into the conversation, completely dominating it.
We nicknamed her Two Sheds. She was one of those who had seen/done/had everything better, even down to trying to convince us that she passed her driving test on her 16th birthday ( in the UK ) but she didn't drive anymore because her husband didn't want her to since she had an accident where a lorry drove clean over her car while she was stationary at a junction
One day she butted into a conversation that i was having with a colleague about our forthcoming holidays.
I told her that i couldn't wait for mine, she asked me where i was going and i replied Atacama. She told me how she had loved it when she went there.
I asked her what the beach was like, she said fantastic, lovely white sands, palm tree's crystal clear blue sea etc.
My colleague and i fell about laughing.
She left not long after when another colleague told her outright to stop telling lies.

Atacama Desert is the driest place in the world, for those who don't know

There's a bit difference between everybody joining in fantasy talk Jux me and dh do it all the time ,what we will do when we win the euro millions, etc and people that are compulsive liars,yes some might be harm less but people like my sil.can be dangerous she accused people of all sorts and caused a lot of damage .

We.at my work are dealing with a liar right now...its terrible.She will call black white and keep a straight face...she is dangerous in my opinion.It has caused huge resentment because of some of the lies she has told ..recently she was absent after setting the scene for being absent weeks before...we knew what she was going to do before she even did it ,it really is that bad.It is disrespectful,inconvinient and breeds nothing but anger.Our work place is not a shadow of its former self due to her causing so much upset.Recently she was found to be lying and was caught out...she knows we are telling the truth but yet she is the victim and spends so much time trying to get us into trouble to cover for herself.I dont know where it will end and I have even thought about leaving my job because of her...its upsetting and angering and I am worn down totally by it.

As others have mentioned, I had a "friend" who was a compulsive liar. I didn't realise for a good few years and felt quite sorry about her stories about having various life threatening illnesses, her baby dying etc. None of it turned out to be true. Some of the stories were hilarious (meeting Gordon Ramsay in a pub and him coming back to theirs after to cook a meal for them..), some of them told to third parties when you were there about things the both of you had got up to, whilst you stood there in absolute shock that she was lying about something you were allegedly witness to. But more dangerously, she told the most shocking lies about people that were damaging. Like really damaging. Once I finally faced up to it I went N/C immediately and some 8 years later I am still incredulous (and very bitter and angry that I let her into my life for so long) that she is walking around completely oblivious to the damage that she causes..

I had a "friend" at school who told the strangest lies, eg she said her dad was the Foreign Minister, when even pre-internet it was fairly easy to find out who the foreign minister was! When a week or so later she claimed that her dad was a professional swimmer (and therefore she knew more about swimming than our friend who trained 6 days a week) I called her out on it and she refused to speak to me afterwards.

I find compulsive liars incredibly insulting. Do they really think that I'm so stupid that I won't remember the things they said to me 2 days ago??

In a workplace I'd also worry about it affecting work. Would she lie about completing work, actions of other colleagues, mistakes, etc?

I would probably let her know gently at first, eg "oh, I thought you grew up in Wigan... I must be getting you mixed up with someone else." and if she carries on then pull her up more directly.

You could be describing my sister who I am now Nc with and this was one of the reasons.

Total drama queen, always playing "one upmanship" but with tragedies as well as successes.

Constantly "reinventing" herself depending on what "bestie" she's cultivating at the time - she does this thing where she's "besties" with someone, gets jealous if they spend time with anyone else (including partner/spouse) but she selects them based on what they can do for her - usually materially - and to develop the relationship she goes somewhat SWF on them.

Over the years she's been "earth mother" (despite being completely flaky as a parent and frequent palming the kids off on others especially my mum, one time she asked me to babysit for a fri night out, she didn't answer her phone until noon on the Sunday and didn't collect the kids until teatime - and then lost it with me for giving the kids dinner!) "career woman" (despite never having held a job for more than 2 years Max, usually 12-18 months), "airhead blonde" (despite being well educated and intelligent), "sporty mum" (despite hating exercise of any kind)

She's lied about ridiculously trivial things like how she takes her cuppa tea or what she's had for lunch, to really quite serious, disturbing things including serious illness of her or DC, pregnancy "scares" etc

The stuff with DCs health has really messed with my mums head, mum takes the stance of always believing her as she'd hate to not and not be supportive of dgc suffering but it's infuriated me! Having me worried sick about a Dn only to find out it was yet another self created drama of hers.

She does have mh issues as do I, but I don't think that's an acceptable excuse for the heartache she's caused and continues to cause, and I believe it's also meant she's lovely been misdx and therefore not received appropriate treatment.

As I say I'm Nc with her now, partly due to more lies she told about an assault she made on me which were thankfully disproved by cctv.

So I think it's a mistake to dismiss these sort of people as "harmless" they aren't always, especially in a work environment.

I would advise cautiously, gently making it clear to the op's liar that op knows X was a lie and taking any potentially harmful lies straight to management.

I know my sister has caused problems for colleagues and employers if they've "wronged" her - that's a large reason why she can't hold down a job!

I've had people from our past come to me with the most ridiculous things they believed to be true of her or me or our family that they totally believed and are shocked to learn weren't true.

The SWF stuff I've found out have been quite shocking too and includes making inappropriate comments to and plain making passes at supposed friends partners/spouses. Claiming that they've made passes at her (usually when she's wanting something out of that couple/family and the partner/spouse has started to get wise to her and advising that "bestie" to be cautious, so she's trying to discredit them)

Whatever the reasons, completely unacceptable behaviour.

"Sometimes people like this lie about their own competence to the extent that they get trusted with a job they can't do, with awful fallout." My sisters done that, lied about qualifications she'd never even studied for! Was soon discovered but was a nightmare for the company concerned, but then partly their fault for not doing their due diligence and checking!

It's not always harmless and it does naturally make you less likely to believe them when they are telling the truth - which is also awful, because if they lie eg about a serious illness and you don't believe them and then they end up very ill/in hospital etc you feel shit for not believing them even though it's their actions which caused you to be disbelieving.

Easy for those who haven't experienced it to this level to be dismissive and judgmental of those of us who have for not being "compassionate" enough.

I have one in my office and I just avoid her as much as possible. Everyone is aware of her BS now at this stage. We often just joke about it amongst ourselves
Sad though, clearly doesn't have an identity of her own