Working with a woman who weirdly lies ALL the time

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I’ve worked with her for about two years and started noticing it more and more.

For example: she’ll have a call at work. I will obviously hear one side of it as we sit next to each other.

She will then repeat the contents of the call if she is asked (if it’s relevant etc) but completely makes up her side of the conversation. And as it’s none of my business I’ll sit there and think ‘erm that didn’t actually happen’.

But she has now started doing it with me. So for example recently I’ve been at home as I put my back out and she said to my colleague in front of me ‘oh poor balls was so bored she kept phoning me to keep her company’

No I didn’t!

She has met my children and made up conversations to others that she has supposedly had with them.

If I say ‘well no you didn’t actually I’m going to look like a right prick aren’t I?’ It’s bizarre and a complete non problem.

My sister was very ill earlier in the year and she told the entire office. It’s not something I particularly wanted to share as when I thought about it I would get quite upset. I come into work not to think about those things and to try and get a break from it.

I've worked with someone like this. The lies got gradually bigger and more drastic, then more malicious. At one point, she had three different ethnic origins and a fluctuating number of ex-husbands and children. One or more of the husbands were then revealed to have committed suicide. She was also one of those people who are too busy scheming and interfering with others' work to get their own job done and turned the malicious lies on anyone in a position to expose her poor workrate.

I don't know whether she believed any of her own lies or not. Several of us ended up going to senior management, who had already worked out that she was a complete liar, but as she was shagging one of the other managers, things moved slowly. She did get the boot, even though she told everyone she was quitting to do something else. She's since changed her name again and is claiming another heritage.

Be wary.

DH calls his sister out on it. “Didn’t happen. What she’s saying, it didn’t happen. Lies. Yes yes, tell more lies hahahahaha” while she’s talking. I hadn’t thought about it until just now but she doesnt do it when he’s there.

I know someone like this - always the heroine of her own anecdotes. Always gets the better of everyone (colleagues and customers), who are very mean to her for no reason. The conclusion is often; other people bad, me good. I think it's insecurity, but it's bloody annoying - and I'd hate to think how she portrays me.

Ranting now. The other bugbear is she knows everyone locally. Nasty car accident recently. ‘Really good friend’ I of course said ‘oh god are they ok’ nope not a good friend. Someone on FB she has mutual friends with.

Oh no! I must sound like this to other people because I have a really bad back story about my childhood so lots of weird stories there, I am very unlucky so again, I always have something very random go wrong that sounds like I must have made it up, and I have this thing where I attract weirdos.

So often I’ll come back from lunch and tell the story of the schizophrenic German woman who followed me in to the shop and told me about her pet pigeon, and it sounds like it must be a lie and everyone is looking at me like “why are you making this story up?” but it isn’t because fucked up shit like that happens to me all the time (that did actually happen to me last week.)

Can you not just look puzzled and say "I was there during that conversation and that's not how it went"?
It is so odd

I think it's often a sign of someone with a personality disorder

Used to know someone exactly like this. Assumed it was an insecurity issue.

I think calling your colleague out in a matter-of-fact way as suggested upthread is the way to go. Certainly others will have noticed but you don't want it to get out of hand, so addressing each and every instance seems a good insurance policy.

Without wanting to sound paranoid i think she is trying to belittle me in the most subtle way.

Not in the least paranoid. Pretending you had phoned her was weird, as if she wants people to think you need or admire her in some way. There is a faint malicious undertone to it.

If a male colleague had done that to you all our collective hackles would rise ..
Watch this bitch closely, & YES to calmly & neutrally calling her out every time her lies involve you. You need other people aware of what she is doing ... unless they already know cos she does it to everyone?
Either way, call it.

I had a male friend like this years ago.
He was mostly harmless but I did not like being alone in a room with him the first time it happened, so made sure it never did again. However ... at least calling him out every time would decrease the lie frequency ... for a while ... rinse & repeat ...

I’d have to call her out, not in a confrontational way, ‘no I/you didn’t’, ‘that didn’t happen’

You’ll soon nip it in the bud

I used to work with someone who did exactly this! Say the phone conversation went, "sorry sir, we don't do that here. I suggest you try somewhere else". She'd say, "so I said - look mate, we've never done that, we're never gonna do that, so you may as well give up phoning us". It's the oddest thing when I was always right there.

@NannyPear yes exactly that! I feel like saying you do realise i can hear you?

Shall take advice and use it. Thank you x

Yeah, I have (had) a friend who turned out to be like this. She was actually a very sweet and intelligent person, but once I found out the fact that just about everything that came out of her mouth was untrustworthy, I couldn't really stay friends with her. So disconcerting, and yes, often when the truth was far easier and there was absolutely no reason to lie, whatsoever. It must be a compulsive thing.

I was once in the office with 6 or 7 other people and one of them had got married a few months earlier. We were talking about my brothers wedding (who got married one week after her) about the photography was sending the full edited photos out that week.

She then pipes up oh yes I'm still waiting for mine to be sent out.

I just looked at her and said your wedding photos? You didn't have a photographer.

She was so adamant she had a photographer even though there was 3 of us in the office who attended her wedding all saying she didn't! It was honestly quite bizarre!

Confabulation- as I mentioned before...

@The80sweregreat I would say I've never been to London. However I've changed flights at Heathrow and went on a coach to an indoor food exhibition when I was 16 and came straight back on the coach.
I've never actually walked around outdoors within London though. So I don't consider myself as ever having been to London 🤷 Could that be what they meant?

I worked with someone like this, everything was over dramatised and it got ridiculous. If your kid had a cold, hers has the plague.
It got the point where I just couldn't talk to her anymore coz I couldn't deal with the bullshit.
Luckily we both moved to different jobs and I just avoid her now. She still does it but people have sussed her out now.

I work with someone like this. But she can't keep her stories straight, she'll tell one person she went to city A yesterday, then tell someone else she went to City B. She's quite senior and she's always gossiping about people and happenings in the business and half the time she's obviously put 2 and 2 together and made 37, I think she does it to make herself sound / feel important. She also pretends she didn't say stuff when she gets caught out when we all heard her say it!

She sounds really annoying!

She’ll be on the phone having a conversation then she’ll say to someone else ‘well I gave john a piece of my mind’

I think I’d just say something like “aww bless you, you were so polite I don’t think he would have noticed haha”

Or “Hecky phoned me so much when she was off”

“You must be thinking of Necky - I was in too much pain to be calling anyone.”

Hopefully your colleagues all know what she’s like so won’t believe her odd lies.

I went to school with someone who did this. Her lie weren't even subtle, they were ridiculous and obviously bollocks. We just thought she was nuts and laughed at her but looking back I expect there was something going on that made her behave like that

NC for this in case she's on here.

I have a colleague like this.

First year or two we worked together I liked her a lot. Assumed she was just shy.

But then the more I was witness to conversations she had with other people the more I saw the lies. And big ones, stupid small ones (like one person she went along saying she was watching the same series on Netflix but doesn't have Netflix and told me she hasn't seen an episode.)

See her comment on group emails/Facebook posts about attending events. Then texts me "is x event on tomorrow. What time is it? I don't know anything about it." When I saw her reply to it an hour earlier saying she's looking forward to it.

Now it's been so long that I doubt anything she says. To the point (and this is awful) that her brother just died in a car accident. But I find myself doubting if it's true and she's just saying it to have a story to tell.

She recently divorced and that got her a lot of attention and she seemed to revel in telling all the details of exDH and now that's sort of gone quiet her brother has had this accident. But I feel a bitch even thinking it. But that's how much her little lies have made me doubt her integrity.

I certainly don't tell her anything personal anymore. Just listen to her stories and react the way she wants me to.

I work with someone like this. Lies all the time even when people around her know the truth?! It's very odd and sometimes worrying. I do wonder what she says about the rest of us that isn't true! Shes actually a lovely person but the lying makes her difficult to work with. She's got lots going on in her personal life at the moment (this isn't the cause of the lying, shes always done it) so basically we can't call her out on it, we just have to put up with it.

My ex was like this...lied about the university he went to, people he'd worked with or for, places he'd been to, events he'd attended...on and on. Told a bloke in the pub we had a mortgage -we were renting our flat.
It was a nightmare, although some of it quite funny, but then he lied to me about who he was having sex with (not me) and that was the end of it.
It's draining and can also make you feel like you're going mad.

I also have a friend like this but she lies about such random, tiny things I don’t see the point. Like a PP said about lying what goes into a recipe she’s made, or about what film she went to see. She’ll lie about having had a Greggs for her lunch for example, and tell everyone how nice the new pastry from there is, when I’ll know she actually went to Subway. I know that sounds absurd ... I don’t get it either