Some people are used to telling little lies. A white lie here, a small omission there… But it all adds up, doesn’t it? Then comes the point when the web of lies becomes so expansive and tricky that the spider becomes the fly, trapped right in the middle of it. No matter how good of a liar they are, it always comes back to haunt them.
In today’s story, the spider became the fly. An employee, used to lying through his teeth, finally slipped and his fed-up colleague pounced on this opportunity to shut him up for good.
More info: Reddit
Compulsive liars may feel unbeatable until they make that one fatal slip-up and all of their lies fall apart
Image credits: Doug (not the actual photo)
The poster took it to the Entitled People community to share how he managed to deal with a one-upping coworker once and for all
Image credits: eGrant03
Image credits: Iguanageek (not the actual photo)
No matter what people said, the entitled guy would start ranting about his own experiences, attempting to overshadow them
Image credits: eGrant03
Image credits: Matt Barber (not the actual photo)
Until one fateful day the poster shared his nephew's most recent achievement and the dude just had to spout about his "better" nephew
Image credits: eGrant03
Image credits: Karolina Grabowska (not the actual photo)
The poster then pinned the guy to the wall to tell him the nephew's name as you can find wrestler stats in a public database
Image credits: eGrant03
Image credits: Carl Lender (not the actual photo)
No matter what they did or how they looked, they couldn't find anyone related to the liar, leading him to bluster more and more
Image credits: eGrant03
When people didn't let go of his lie, he stormed out shouting about going to HR, but it was already too late and his reputation was finally shattered
A particularly painful kind of liar is your classic one-upper. It gets so bad that it seems that they don’t even do it for some kind of tangible gain, but because they cannot do anything but lie.
Dealing with the chronic one-upper is particularly insidious, as all the lies whittle you down, while they keep diminishing all of your woes and victories. At the end of the day, you feel as if you can’t talk about pretty much anything when they’re around, because you just know that they’ll hijack the conversation and make it about themselves.
The original poster (OP) emphasizes this very fact, saying that the constant lies and one-upping wore people down, with them even taking it to HR, hoping that they could do something to make the offender mend his ways.
Unfortunately, as HR “can’t know” whether the liar’s stories are true, they refused to do anything. Especially when the liar was an important person in the workplace.
OP has also seemingly mentioned that the offender is good-looking, which is just so typical, right?
Again, the classic stereotype of the charming liar. We won’t make any comparisons to Patrick Bateman today, but it certainly does seem as if peeps with good looks get off the hook far more easily than us, run-of-the-mill mortals.
The liar in the story finally met his match when he slipped up after OP shared about his savant and medalist wrestler nephew. Of course, the liar had an even better nephew, of course he was higher-ranked, and of course he had to pipe up about it.
When OP saw that the guy had become timid about something, he took over his computer and lo and behold - they could not locate the far-more-amazing nephew. The dude stammered and blustered himself into a corner, even storming out at the end.
Of course HR intervened then, but they couldn’t really do anything substantial, as the liar’s reputation had been permanently ruined.
Image credits: Helena Lopes (not the actual photo)
People have discussed how to deal with one-uppers on Quora. The top answer explains that people do this because they want adoration from you and other listeners. They do this by showing that they know more than you or that they have something so much more than you.
When I say “more” I mean exactly that - they don’t necessarily have it better, they can also have it worse.
They seem to maximize you feeling lesser on all accounts. You had a bad day? Welp, they had it worse, therefore that must mean that no matter how bad your day actually was, it doesn’t really matter.
It’s like you can’t win with them. You’re always in their shadow.
Then, the thread goes on to discuss the potential ways of dealing with these people. Angela Neik suggests just listening to them without much reaction. According to her, they’ll eventually realize that you’re not a good target and move on to others.
Another person suggested the old “smile and wave” tactic of playing innocent. They talk to you and you just smile at them, while knowing that they’re doing this because you have something you don’t. This doesn’t need to be a real thing, it could be some character trait, especially confidence.
Medium writer Emer Ryan suggests a slightly different and less condescending tactic - compassion. She says that people should strive to understand why one-uppers do these things and that understanding will give them the tools to protect themselves.
Once you understand that their behavior comes from a place of deep-seated insecurity, you can begin drawing boundaries. You can avoid engaging yourself with them entirely and not talking about your personal life.
They will start to realize that they can’t beat you in their game of one-upping – they can’t even get to you, as you’re not participating – they will start to slowly back off.
This story got 1.3k upvotes on Reddit with a discussion of 68 comments following it. The commenters cheered the OP on, saying that they dealt with it superbly. Share your own epic owns of one-uppers down below!
The community congratulated the poster with their shining victory, saying that it was a job well done
Image credits: Masa Israel Journey (not the actual photo)
