SO maybe you aren’t entirely proficient at Microsoft Excel, despite what you wrote on your resume. And sure, maybe the product you’re hawking isn’t as amazing as you’re making it out to be, but everyone knows understatement doesn’t pay the bills. And you’ll be taking a few days off work because your grandmother died . . . again . . . for the fourth time?
Lying in the workplace is nothing unusual. According to a 2006 survey by CareerBuilder.com, 19 percent of workers admitted to stretching the truth at least once a week (and many of the others were likely stretching the truth when they reported otherwise), so you’re not alone when you claim your BlackBerry must’ve malfunctioned, or that you missed work because of food poisoning. In fact, some experts would argue that while you may be being dishonest, you’re also just being smart.
The truth is that everyone lies at work all the time, says David Shulman, associate professor of sociology and anthropology at Lafayette College and author of “From Liar to Hire: The Role of Deception in the Workplace.” And the reason we do it is simple: Lying is a useful tool in a competitive atmosphere.
“The bottom line is that people lie because lying is effective,” he says. “People compete within and across workplaces, so they need to look better than they actually are, whether for donors, clients or bosses. Acting deceptively and getting away with it gives you an edge.”
People also “deceive to respond to stressful situations and pressures to look good,” he says. “In this sense, deception is a tactic of survival.”
But workers aren’t looking to merely survive in the workplace anymore. They’re looking to dominate. Which is why they’ll fabricate just about anything, big or small, and, as research has shown, in any form of communication available, be it e-mail, on the phone or face-to-face.
A 2004 Cornell University study found people lied the most on the telephone, about equal amounts in instant messages and face-to-face interactions, and least in e-mail. Why? With the telephone, there’s no paper trail and no physical interaction. By physically and/or mentally removing yourself from the situation, you distance yourself from the consequences as well.
A 2008 study from Lehigh, Rutgers and DePaul universities backs up this theory. In that study, workers felt much more justified lying via e-mail compared to pen-and-paper transactions, presumably because typed lies feel less committal than handwritten ones.
Deceit and greet
Lies can be broken down into two types, says Bella DePaulo, a visiting psychology professor at UC Santa Barbara who studies deception. One is the self-centered lie, which is used to make you look better (“I’m right on top of that project”) or to avoid embarrassment or conflict (“I’m late because of subway construction”).
Always nursing a hangover after Wednesday dollar-beer nights, Ben, a 26-year-old media sales director in Manhattan, started telling his boss he had weekly Thursday morning physical therapy appointments so he wouldn’t need to come into the office until noon. The ruse went on successfully for two years until Ben switched jobs – and although he suspected a few co-workers knew the truth, he never got called out. Still, the charade wasn’t completely without problems.
“Once, I forgot to not go to work, and someone asked, ‘Don’t you have a doctor’s appointment?’ ” Ben recalls. “I was like, ‘Oh, yeah,’ and actually had to leave. So I took a walk around the park, then went and got a manicure.”
The other kind of lie is the other-centered lie, which is used to spare someone else’s feelings (“Don’t worry, you did fine in that presentation”). Even that can create problems, as Erica, 23, a Brooklyn barkeep, found out recently. Faced with a staff shortage, she hired a few new people, including a girl from the neighborhood whom she’d recently befriended. Bad move – the new girl was slow on the pour, and customers started complaining.
“I ended up firing her, but had to lie about why because I felt so bad,” Erica says. “I told her the owner had watched her working one night and made me do it.”
Even though she lied to spare the girl’s feelings, it was Erica who ended up getting burned. A co-worker “told her the whole story and ratted me out,” she says. After that, “She totally wasn’t my friend anymore.”
Then there’s another subcategory of workplace lies: those workers tell for their bosses rather than to them.
Several years ago, 45-year-old Angela (not her real name) worked as a sales associate at a Madison Avenue jewelry store where the owner and manager altered her receipts to avoid paying sales taxes.
“I didn’t like it, but I still needed my job,” she says. “When you see your boss doing stuff, it’s like, what do you do?”
For personal assistants, telling regular stretchers at the boss’ behest can be part of the job description, says Lilit Marcus, a former assistant who runs the blog Save the Assistants, where minions vent about their work.
“I hear about it all the time,” she says, noting that fibs run the gamut from routine, like telling a caller “She’s in a meeting right now,” to extreme, like helping a boss hide an affair.
While the “just following orders” rationale eases guilt, it doesn’t necessarily eliminate it – nor does it provide reliable cover, says Marcus. She cites a number of instances in which workers terminated for things such as falsifying records sued, arguing that were only doing what they were told.
The best policy?
So where should one draw the line? Strategic lying may help you get to the top of the office food chain faster, but at what price?
Clinton Korver, co-author of “Ethics for the Real World: Creating a Personal Code To Guide Decisions in Work and Life,” believes even the smallest lies are damaging, because they threaten the relationship with the person on the receiving end. Once you lie, “you’ve now created a barrier with that individual,” Korver says. “You lose authenticity in the relationship.”
Furthermore, lying has a snowball effect, argues Bruce Weinstein, a k a “The Ethics Guy,” who writes an ethics column for BusinessWeek.com.
“The more we lie, the easier it becomes to lie. Also, for each lie we tell, we may feel compelled to tell another and another, just to cover our tracks. In the long run, it’s actually easier to be honest than dishonest.”
The best antidote, Korver says, is to think in advance about the circumstances under which you’re willing to lie. For instance, would you lie to someone simply because they had lied to you? Maybe not. But perhaps you’d be willing to stretch the truth if it meant a promotion.
Korver admits he’s pretty hard-core – he doesn’t think there’s ever an appropriate time to lie, even if it means losing your job.
Linda Trevino, director of the business ethics program at Smeal College of Business at Penn State University, is slightly more forgiving.
“In general, the only time lying is OK is to preserve a more important value,” she says. For example, if a violent employee is pink-slipped and demands to know where the boss is, it’s not unethical to claim you don’t know out of concern the employee might cause your boss harm.
She admits there are few such scenarios in the workplace. So unless you’re confronted with jilted coworkers, the little white lies that fall out of your mouth probably fall on the unethical side.
One way to minimize unnecessary deceit is to try to avoid situations in which you know you’ll be lying a blue streak. When you’re taking a job, for example, examine whether it stays within you ethical comfort zone. Being a salesperson or undercover cop, for example, might not be the best fit if you’re squeamish about stretching the truth.
And if you’re already in a job that doesn’t align with your ethics?
Says Korver, “Start looking for a new job.”