Beijing Balderdash
“In college I had a friend who was a very good pole vaulter. Seriously, one of the top in the state for his division. This was back in 2008. He tells ALL of his family, friends, and even his boss that he was recruited to compete in the Beijing Olympics.
Well, his close friends, including myself, have already called bull, but when the ‘day’ comes he is nowhere to be found. In fact, we didn’t see him for a couple of days, and he started texting pictures from Beijing, so we were doubting ourselves a bit.
Then we were driving along the freeway, and guess who’s broken down on the side of the road like 2 days after he left? Mr. Olympian! When we pulled over, the look on his face was priceless. He stood by his story too and said because of the time difference he already went and came back.
He’s such an idiot. I still don’t know what he had to gain from such an elaborate bullcrap story. A few years later, his boss (also my friend’s uncle) approached me and asked if he really went. When I said not a chance, he was like, ‘I KNEW IT!’ Final bonus is that all the ‘pics from Beijing’ were from a Google image search of the Beijing Olympics.”
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.”
It Just Didn’t Add Up
“I dated this guy off and on for about a year. Things didn’t always add up, but I was young and dumb and made excuses. During that year, his mom passed away from pancreatic cancer, he relapsed and then went to rehab.
After he got out, he moved a few states away for a fresh start near where his grandparents lived. We decided we were done at that point, but he still emailed occasionally, and a couple times he’d randomly show up on my doorstep saying he was in town and needed to see me.
After one such surprise visit, I emailed him and said that I couldn’t keep doing this and to please not come by anymore. A year or so passed, and I got a bug up my butt one night to Google him. I found a baby registry with his name on it.
I looked the baby mama up on Facebook and found pictures of them living together just a few hours away and during the time that he and I were dating. I was able to determine that they weren’t together when we first started seeing each other, but when he was supposedly in California missing me so much and didn’t want to be with anyone else, he was actually just a few hours away with her.
The kicker was that his mom was still alive too. It became clear to me that he was a pathological liar and I’d basically fallen in love with someone that didn’t really exist. Here’s the satisfying part: literally the next day he showed up on my doorstep. The first thing I said is, ‘Where’s (baby mama’s name)? Does she know you’re here?’
His face dropped, and he started stammering, making excuses about how I didn’t know what was really going on. He even insisted that his mom was dead. I felt like I was in a girl power movie moment as I told him to get off my porch and never come see me again.”
Catching This Lie Saved This Baby’s Life
“I worked daycare and was told to never accept babies sleeping in car seats or sleeping children at all. So if Mom or Dad brought a kid asleep, I immediately woke them up and pulled them out of their car seat. This made so many parents displeased with me but it’s policy.
I used to think it was to help the kid be on a schedule until one day a grandma brought a baby asleep and he was not waking up at all. Just raise his head, whimper and go back to sleep. Immediately my boss called 911 and grandma was trying to downplay with lies like ‘he had a rough night, he’s just tired.’ I knew this baby, he wouldn’t sleep if he thought he was going to miss out, we had music playing and kids loudly singing and dancing. In the chaos, grandma slipped out and at some point someone called the parents.
Turns out Granny had a history of giving kids stuff to knock them out when she babysat but this time she did it to a 6 month old and that’s why he wouldn’t wake up. I think they pumped the kid’s stomach and he had a stay at the hospital. Legal actions were taken and the family moved away.
To clarify, the policy was put in place because my boss knew abusers have been known to do this. They’d break the kid’s arm, dose them, dump them with the sitter who lets the baby asleep all morning then because the kid was with the sitter all day, it’s easy to blame them for the baby’s injury. Or worse, the baby died and they do this to blame the sitter.
So yea, to this day if I’m babysitting, I don’t accept sleeping children. I flat out refuse to watch kids at their home while they’re sleeping for the same reason. I’ve pretty much stopped doing any child care because as much as I love kids, watching parents make bad decisions on purpose when they know better, was killing my soul.”
‘I Wanted To Marry Her’
“My girlfriend at the time told me she was going to a ‘girls only’ pool party with some of her fellow waitresses from the restaurant she worked at. I had felt something weird going on for a bit, and had put a lot of effort into making that night a surprise ‘date night.’
I worked that morning, and she worked in the evening. While she was at work, I cleaned the whole apartment (that we shared) and cooked a fancy surf and turf dinner with filet mignon, lobster tails, butter pasta, expensive bottles, the works. I also rented a few movies I knew she would like. So when she suddenly told me she was going to this pool party after dinner, around 10 pm (!!!), and I couldn’t come, I was pretty exasperated and knew something was not right.
I noticed she was putting her phone face down every time she received a text about this party. While she is putting on her sexiest bikini to wear under her clothes, I decide to look at the phone, and it’s some dude from her work (under the name Angela in her phone), telling her that he can’t wait to see her, he can’t stop thinking about the other night, etc. I scroll down a bit, and they even said they loved each other. There’s not really a worse feeling in the world when you are in love with someone and they do that to you.
She comes back into the room, and queue one of the worst nights I’ve ever had as she blames all of this on me for not proposing to her quickly enough (we were 22, relatively poor, in college, and I did very much want to marry her).
She trashes the apartment, breaks the screen off of my laptop, cuts up a few of my favorite shirts, and breaks MY phone after going through it looking for some sort of justification for her actions and finding none, throwing it at the wall and stomping on it. But hey…it was satisfying knowing that I wasn’t going crazy, and I learned some valuable life lessons.”
Treacherous Teammate
“I played college basketball, and one of my teammates had a chronic condition with the truth. We were roommates my first summer, and I always suspected he was stealing my clothes. At one point, every player received a custom pair of Jordans in our school’s colors. But within a week, mine went missing.
A month later, I noticed my roommate/teammate was wearing a pair of Jordans. Later in the day we were in a gym and I waited until we were all relaxing, and he had the soles of his shoes facing forward as he sat.
I told all of my other teammates what I suspected, and approached him. ‘Hey, have you seen my Jordans?’
‘Nah, I already told you. Now leave me alone.’
‘Then why is my number written on the soles of the shoes you’re wearing?’
You see, the team equipment staff had predicted some shoes might go missing, so they had marked each pair. I made him take the shoes off right there since I couldn’t trust that I’d get them back at the end of the day. After that, his nickname on the team was Simba, for being the Lyin’ King.
Later, he had another unbelievable incident of being caught in a lie. We had an athletic trainer whose job it was to make sure we were taking care of our bodies. If we got hurt, it was his responsibility to make sure we were getting treatment before and after every practice or game.
My teammate/roommate had sprained his ankle earlier that week in practice, and the rule was if you weren’t with the training staff getting treatment, then you weren’t really hurt. Skipping treatment but saying you were hurt was a huge no-no with our coach.
I was in there for my own injury, and the trainer comes up to say, ‘Where’s your roommate? He was supposed to be here 30 minutes ago, and practice starts soon.’ I didn’t know, so the trainer called him.
Over the phone, my roommate tells our trainer that he’s just getting out of class on campus, and it’ll take him at least another 20 minutes to get back, so no time for treatment. The trainer hung up the phone and stared at me with an incredulous look. ‘This mofo just told me he was on campus…I called his room phone.'”
Demented Divorcee
“When my wife and I split, a year went by with no settlement in what should have been a very simple divorce (no children, no remarkable assets or property). Instead, it had been nothing but lies, harassment, and threats from this attorney who had just recently got her law license back after having it suspended for a year.
There was a lot of stuff that had transpired, but the last straw was when I begrudgingly agreed to pay $1,500 in legal fees to her attorney because I just wanted the nightmare to end. After she got the cashiers check, she claimed to have ‘destroyed’ it because it wasn’t made out to her and was instead made out to my ex, as ordered by the court. A few emails followed as I cancelled the cashiers check. She tried to have my ex cash the check while demanding another one in her name.
After a year of nonstop threats and lies, my lawyer and I were fed up. We filed sanctions against her. It had been 3 months since the incident, they weren’t producing a settlement as ordered by the judge, and when they finally did on the day of the sanctions hearings, it was more of a criminal document to implicate me than a settlement.
She had filed counter-sanctions against me for filing sanctions against her. That made us file a second order for sanctions against her because she basically tried to extort me by saying that she’d lift her sanctions against me if we pay her $5,000.
For that entire year and a half period, it seemed like my ex and her crazy attorney had always gotten their way, and that their consistent harassment and lies had been rewarded by the court. At the sanctions hearing, I was shocked when the judge started with a few simple questions for both sides, and then immediately tore into my ex’s attorney for 15 minutes. I mean tore into, like yelling at her and telling her how much of an embarrassment this was to the court system. It was surreal to me.
What was even more surreal was when I got the judge’s ruling 90 days later. It was a document written by the judge, who had meticulously reviewed our case and basically written a 35-page thesis on it. It called out all of the lies from my ex’s attorney. It was unbelievable to see on paper from an impartial judge, calling out my ex and her attorney on all of their lies and their abhorrent behavior.
My ex had to pay back the legal fees and her attorney had to pay me $2,000, which meant she had to report herself to the state bar. If she didn’t, the judge had done it for her anyway by mailing the entire ruling to the bar. Last I heard, she’d made her law license inactive and moved to another state to be a waitress.”
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 story still bothers 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.”
She Was Just Trying To Help
“I helped an older woman who mistakenly rented a room in her house to the most evil family I’ve ever met. She offered the 2 rooms and private bathroom to the family of 4 because the house they were renting caught fire and they were forced out into a hotel. She just wanted to help. She brought dinners out to their hotel and all the insane things you’d imagine the nicest person in the world to do.
They stabbed her in the back: never paid rent, abused the heck out of her laundry machine, and ate her food. One day I went over and could hear the toilet running from the hallway, since they didn’t give a hoot about wasting water. So I grabbed a recorder and knocked on the door, asking if I could come in and check on the running toilet.
The mother just banged on the door back at me so loud it sounded like she was going to break it. Then she shouted at me through the door about how she was going to bury the old woman in the backyard.
She eventually let me in, I fixed the toilet, and moved on to other projects around the house. I figured that was over with. NOPE. About 15 minutes later, I see a cop car in the driveway. Ok, this is malarkey, but I guess I should go talk to him.
The cop sees me coming, and as soon as I was within earshot he starts lecturing me about how illegal it is to harass tenants. I stopped him and said, ‘You’re yelling at me without even asking for my side of the story. Would you like to hear what actually happened?’
So I played the recording. He spun around and unleashed extreme fury on this woman for lying to him. All the while I stood there smiling at her from over his shoulder. I’ll never forget that feeling of actual justice in the middle of a 8-month long nightmare.
Also, I hate to ruin a story about justice served, but the tenants lied in court about the rent and had their children lie to the judge. They claimed she’d offered them housing if they’d attend her church. Since it was an all verbal agreement, the judge sided with them, and they left without paying anything. But at least they left.”
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.”
Money Trumping Reason
“When I moved out of a house I had been renting years ago, the landlady decided that she wanted to keep my security deposit. We had been on friendly terms for the 5+ years I lived there; she’d even invited me to dinner parties at her house.
I had been a model tenant, so I don’t know why she turned on me aside from pure greed. When I persisted in asking her for the money, she started making up reasons to keep it, claiming that she had to do costly cleanup of some mess I allegedly left.
By luck, before things went sour, I had arranged to store some furniture at the property until I was ready for it. When I went to retrieve it, it was obvious that the property was exactly as I had left it, and the details of what she had claimed were entirely false. She had no answer when I confronted her with this fact, and she finally grudgingly paid up. I still see her around and she tries to act like nothing ever happened, but she is dead to me. How someone can let a little money trump all reason and integrity is beyond me.”
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 7pm, 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 8:30pm 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 9pm 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.”