COWORKER PLANTS LIES

Hi "Uncle Jim":

I stumbled onto your site googling the phrase "lying coworker," a search which of course yields a wealth of hits. I was impressed with your advice/observations in response to the situations posted and would appreciate your thoughts on this bit of weirdness.

It seems that most of the lying coworker stories out there are being told by people
who are being lied ABOUT.  The one that's bothering me, thank goodness, isn't one of those.  Well, at least not yet.  (Well, at least not yet that I know of.  One never knows with liars.)

The department I work in is unusual: Nearly everyone telecommutes full-time.  The vast majority of communication is via email.  This, of course, has both ups and
downs -- no forced contact with annoying coworkers!  On the other hand, it can get
mighty lonesome.  So a handful of us who bumped into each other in our cyber-workspace got started emailing each other... a combination of some helpful teamwork on work-related issues and, of course, a chance to kvetch.  Eventually part of the conversation moved off the company email and into private email.

Basically, from my perspective anyway, this is a dream job.  But like all workplaces, there are some good reasons to kvetch.  And like most workers, we (myself included) no doubt kvetch a bit MORE than there are really good reasons for. 

One member of this rather randomly-assembled group, however, had horror stories
about our bosses that were really, really unnerving.  It was quite astounding the
ill treatment that she came in for, almost all for the "crime" of having a malfunctioning (company-supplied) computer and therefore being a thorn in the
side of management.  This coworker was startlingly outspoken in her exchanges with our bosses, too. 

Others of us shook our heads and wondered to each other how much longer she could possibly keep her job, given how she talked to our bosses AND the quite open hostility with which they reportedly treated her.  Yet the situation persisted, and every week or so she'd have a new atrocity story.  The thought was tossed around that perhaps the (generally useless) union was managing to protect her from getting fired, but not managing to protect her from anything else. Though she didn't talk about having involved the union.  It was all rather baffling.

I tend to read things with a pretty close eye for exaggeration, and I couldn't
see how her stories could be exaggerations: They were simply too specific, too clearcut, full of entirely too much detail. 

Naturally, the general anxiety level among the small email group skyrocketed.  All of us came to seriously fear at least one of our bosses.  Tinfoil hats, secret handshakes, and decoder rings became recurring items of graveyard humor.

And this poor coworker was not only targeted by management, it seemed, but she also always had stuff going on in her personal life... car wrecks, storm damage to her house, catastrophic health issues with family members, you name it.

A month or two ago, this person's latest job-related atrocity story happened
to be something I could very easily confirm.  She claimed that she'd been receiving
a WILDLY disproportionate amount of a particularly miserable type of work - far,
FAR beyond the normal peaks and valleys of random distribution.  She said that she had complained to our bosses and been stonewalled. 

Unbeknownst, apparently, to HER, our system is such that anyone who is computer savvy can quite easily see who has done how much of that type of work on any given day.

So, being the nosy sort, I did. 

She was lying.  Simply, purely, flat-out lying.  She had, in fact, been getting
almost precisely the departmental average for that type of work.  For the days she
cited, she was claiming to have had TWELVE TIMES as much of that work type
as she'd actually had.  And she had given specific dates and numbers, so there
could be no mistake... though I checked dates far, far on either side of those she
gave just in case.  Nope.  Lying.  Just flat-out lying about the whole thing.

Since that incident, of course, there have been several more wild tales, though
naturally there aren't many things that I can definitively check out myself;
the one was just a stroke of luck, really.  But from the bits and pieces I AM able
to check, it really appears to me that probably the majority of her stories -- at
least the work-related ones -- are mostly or entirely lies.

Sooo... the question, of course, is what to do?  My first (stupid) impulse was to
confront her privately.  Fortunately it occurred to me before doing so that the
last thing I needed was for someone this screwed up to mount a campaign against
ME because she figured I Knew Too Much and therefore was a threat to her. 

But, I mean... our bosses may not be universally fair and perfect in every way,
but they're pretty damn good (once I subtract the reality warp she contributed
to the mix and go by my own direct experience with them!), and it really rubs me
the wrong way to sit by silently while she boldfaced lies about them. 

And of course the damage she's doing to department morale, which I guess isn't
my problem, but fercryingoutloud, quite apart from liking our bosses and resenting
her slandering them, from what I can see most of our coworkers are pretty good sorts who don't deserve to have their anxiety levels escalated for no flippin'
good reason at all. 

So far I've been choking back the urge to respond at all to her emails.  To
just sign off from the little email group altogether would be... ostentatious, and raise questions that would leave me having to either explain or lie.

Suggestions?  Observations on the forest I'm not seeing for the trees here?
Advice?  Whatever?

Thanks a million!

-- Ptarmigans
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Dear Ptarmigans,

Let’s take a look at the facts.

Fact: The target is a liar, established clearly by computer records. Therefore, we have to assemble her profile with a big question mark over everything she says and give weight to other evidence.

Fact: As the World Turns has a thinner script than your coworker’s contrivances. Much of her bombast, fact based or fabricated, belongs in a “soap,” not in the work place. The target is a liar and a gossip.

Fact: Spouting fantasized tales in the work place hurts efficiency, people, the company, and ultimately the liar/gossip. The target is a liar,a gossip, and a destructive fool.  
“What to do?”

As Don Corleone said, “Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer.”
You were wise not to confront her personally. She is the company’s liability not yours; don’t get caught in the crossfire. Stay in the E-mail circuit; never take your eye off the ball or the enemy. If she E-mails you, use your excellent writing style and keep in mind what you say to the proud mother of an ugly baby, “Isn’t he adorable.” I’m sure you get my drift.

Tactic:

You are playing against a lying, gossiping, destructive fool. That combination will implode at some point in time. She has been planting lies all over the place. You caught her with her “plants down” and others will too.

As for communicating with your bosses, I suggest a tested tactic: do not quote anyone. Instead of saying, “So and so said…” say, “I got the impression that…”
This commits you to nothing. You could mistake Ludacris for Luciano and have only to confess to a “tin ear.” 

 Everybody’s Uncle