Discussion»Questions»Relationships» Has anyone ever admitted lying to you? How did you treat the situation? How many chances would you give to someone you love?
After all of the decades I've been on planet Earth and all the contact I've have with multitudes of human beings, it would be impossible imagine the opposite.
Citing a work-related incident, a man admitted that the paperwork he had turned in to our office was rife with falsehoods and forged signatures. It wasn't news to me; I had caught the discrepancies immediately upon reviewing his applications. He came clean only for selfish reasons, he wanted his back-door honesty to count towards being granted the benefit he was seeking. In order to do so, I would have had to join in his subterfuge because my signature was also required if the documents got passed along beyond my office.
I asked him why he hadn't just been honest from the beginning, and whether or not he thought we wouldn't notice his lies. He said that he was desperate for one thing, and that he thought we didn't check or didn't care what people put on their applications. I told him that there were some employees who were so lazy and apathetic that they didn't check or didn't care, but that he had happened to draw me in the lottery of life. I also told him that being desperate was no excuse for lying. I asked him if in raising his children whether he wanted them to be honest with him or to lie to him. He was shocked and immediately answered, "Why, to be honest with me, of course!" I then asked whether or not if in his own upbringing he had been taught to be honest to his parents or to lie to them when it suited him. Again he was adamant, "They taught me to be honest with them!" In closing, I asked whether or not the lessons taught at home were just for the home, or if their purposes were also to guide a person outside the home and throughout life. He saw the point, and even if he didn't like or understand his application being denied, that's exactly what happened. ~
Thanks for sharing your story. I appreciate your time. Do you think he learned anything? Do you think he'd go on to do the same thing with another company?
Like I had told him, it was the luck of the draw for me that I was the person who received his paperwork. Many others would either have purposefully overlooked the discrepancies or would have not noticed them at all. As such, anything he may have learned was based on the slim chance that he got someone who closely scrutinizes assignments. It's important to note that a large percentage of non-deserving people had their packets approved, a practice that had gone on for years. The man in my story took a chance, rolled the dice, and came up snake eyes. I'm sure it wasn't neither his first rodeo or his last. Yes, he may have re-submitted either to a different employee or a different office location after the denial that day.
Yes, I am sure i have had that happen a time or two... more often they lie and don't admit it... but I am pretty good at telling when someone is lying... I am definitely a mover on and don't let bad things dwell but I've a vague recollection of a few times.. I walked away... last time it happened I went round to ask the person why they had lied to me and did I deserve it.. I think in my mind I wanted to give the person a chance to explain.. perhaps there was a reasonable explanation, perhaps they would have apologised and I would have forgiven... as it was the person turned defensive and got very angry... and it went from bad to worse.. lol i have just recalled that memory... even so i think I would still have done the same again as my motives were genuine.. unfortunately their's werent
Yes once a friend admitted he lied to me and to put it mildly I didn't handle it very nicly because the lie cost me a little bit of money and a little bit of respect because I had told people he was cool. As far as how many chances I'd give to a loved one goes it would be a million and one. An example would be when my youngest son was going threw his teen years he lied to me all the time but I kept giving him chances and now he's got a good job and I know I can believe every word he says. Cheers!
Randy D 