In Retrospect, It's Still TOTALLY WHACKED

I have no idea what would remind me of sitting quietly while someone OBVIOUSLY puked out lie after lie (::cough::cough::), but here we are. I find myself reminiscing about the weirdest situation I've ever encountered in my professional life. I've never written the story because I don't mix work with blog, but enough time has passed. I can tell you about the time my path crossed with that of a serial liar.

My first hint came my second week into the job at the place that was the most toxic place I've ever worked. The fact that the whole place was toxic was a part of why it took me that long to start to catch on, by the way. When EVERYBODY is off, it's hard to spot the offest thing around. The offest thing around was, however, the woman who kept telling me about her employees.

For a little perspective, I think it's worth noting that the woman who claimed to have an army of employees had the same job title as me. I probably made more money than her because experience and general competency, but even if she somehow made more than me, SPIDEY SENSES ALERT. Why would someone employ a bunch of people but then work somewhere else for peanuts?

To hear her tell the tale, she owned a consulting business and had 300 employees. They had an office on the east side of town, but everybody worked remotely because she didn't care where they worked as long as they got it done. By the way, her husband worked for a Pittsburgh-based retail company, so both of them held middle management positions while paying 300 people top dollar. TOTALLY MAKES SENSE.

The stories about the fake business ran deep and were thorough. There was a website. There was a physical address that was definitely fake, and which was easily proven as such. There was even a list of employees, none of whom existed outside of the web page ... no LinkedIn, no Facebook, nothing. But, it gets better. She recruited people to work for her. There were offer letters and everything.

People quit their jobs at Toxic Place, thinking they were going to go have a dream job working for her, and then figured out the truth. There have been all sorts of legal shenanigans over the thing, but as far as I know, nothing has gone anywhere because SHE FAKED HER DEATH.

Seriously.

After weaving the tale about owning a business, she added some new layers. There was the part where she was moving to a new house because someone passed away and left her this giant mansion and a pot of money for maintenance. There was the other part where one of her employees was in a car accident and hurt his leg and was hospitalized so she had to go visit him.

Then she got cancer.

Seriously. She stood in the office and told everyone that she was in chemo because she had throat cancer.

Two weeks after she started in on THAT story, she went to Ireland for vacation. That part I think was true because there were photos and stuff, but chemo ... vacation ... I mean, COME ON.

And then she came back from vacation and quit her job. Her explanation was that she didn't want to be a drain on the company and she wanted to focus on her treatment, but then a few weeks later, her husband posted all over social media that she had passed away.

THE HUSBAND WAS IN ON IT.

That part still makes me blink wildly. I don't understand.

For what it's worth, her adult son then posted photos on Facebook showing her alive and well. Like, he just ignored the whole shenanigans thing. What actually happened is the whole family picked up and moved to Florida. According to her recently updated LinkedIn profile, she worked for a Big Huge company for a few years and is now working in Human Resources for a small family-owned business. Her time working at that Toxic Place I also worked is not listed on her profile ... it's as if those years don't exist in her head.

I legit hope she has gotten the help she CLEARLY needs because none of that whole story is the sign of a healthy person. I also legit hope she has stopped taking other people down with her. That was always the part that I found the hardest - it wasn't that she had created this world she wanted to live in that bothered me, it was that she ruined other peoples' lives in doing it.

There's a whole bunch more, but that's the gist of the the six months of my life when I learned that it really is possible for a person to become so entrenched in their own lies that they end up believing the lies. It's a thing.

I just wish it weren't a thing with our government officials. ::sigh::

Comments

[eMILE]

Wow, just, no words, wow!