Liar, Liar ~ Pants on Fire!

Those used to be terrible words to hear, you were SHAMED if you lied!

Now?  Not so much.

Oh, I know we all lie, I even wrote about it here.  And raising children makes you a liar all the time.  “Oh NO!  McDonald’s is closed today.  Bummer!”  “I’m gonna throw away EVERY SINGLE Barbie you have if you don’t clean up this mess right now.”

But it’s become common practice in business now.  I’m not sure when it became ok to lie to consumers, but apparently it’s just fine and dandy to lie.

For example ~ we’ve decided the underground fencing is best for our dogs because they REALLY want to hang out in the back yard instead of their beautiful fenced in yard. I won’t mention the name of the company I was dealing with because I can’t be sure this is something the company is responsible for, but their sales person sure is a liar.

I spoke with Donald (names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent…but why the hell am I doing that?  He’s a liar, why should I care?  Ok, I’m still changing his name to Donald…sorry to all the Donald’s out there.) over the phone because they were all booked up and couldn’t come out to look around, give an estimate and tell me stuff that made them sound important.

Finally, I knew Mac wouldn’t be able to talk to him last week, so when Donald called on Friday I asked if he was available outside of business hours.

“Absolutely!  Here’s my cell phone number.  He can call anytime on Saturday before 3:00. And if I don’t answer, leave a message and I’ll get right back to him.”

Great….Mac can call on Saturday.

Saturday ~ Mac calls at 2:00.  Leaves a message (I heard the message…he even left his phone number and said who he was ~ kudos!!).

TODAY, on Monday, while Mac is driving to Atlanta for a week-long conference, Donald calls back and leaves THIS message:

“Hi!  Sorry I didn’t get back to you Saturday.  I never have my cell phone with me on the weekend.”

SOOOOO, who is Donald lying to?  Me or Mac.

I’m gonna ask him.

Now, before you all flip out and say I’m really being bitchy about all this ~ after all he did call back ~ here’s why:

He could have said any number of reasons he didn’t call back.  He could have been sick/away/busy/forgetful/drinking/partying/having sex/eating/didn’t feel like working.

ANYTHING except “I never have my cell phone with me on the weekend.”  And really? What young person do you know that doesn’t have their cell phone with them ALL THE TIME?  (He sounded young…but of course, EVERYONE sounds  young when you’re old middle aged.

Life Happens.  That’s my excuse for nearly everything and I totally understand “Life Happens”.  Hell, I think it should be one of the check boxes on all applications and anywhere they ask for a reason for some stupid question…..

“Why did you leave your last position?”  Life Happened.

“Why did you run that stop sign, ma’am?”  Life Happened.

“Why did you decide to have another margarita?”  Life Happened.

See, it’s the perfect answer…and it’s not anywhere near a Lie.