Update: AITA for accidentally calling out a new colleague on lying about her language skills?

The user had a situation with a colleague, Cathy, who exaggerated her language skills and work experience during her hiring process. After Cathy lied about the user making fun of her in Dutch, the user clarified the situation with HR, providing a detailed account of the events.

Cathy continued to lie, but eventually, HR confronted her, and she admitted to fabricating her language skills and work experience. As a result, Cathy was let go. The user feels confident that the situation would have eventually blown up regardless of their actions.

‘ Update: AITA for accidentally calling out a new colleague on lying about her language skills?’

Many people gave the advice to go to HR, others said NOT to go to HR because that would be escalating the situation. I decided not to go to HR right then, but I did take the advice to write down what happened, with the time and the names of the other colleagues present just in case.

I thought the situation might blow over, because Cathy was probably just embarrassed. Well, I was wrong. Cathy kept being cold to me, rolling her eyes at me in meetings and talking behind my back. Another colleague came to confront me at one point to ask me why I’d been so mean.

Apparently Cathy was telling a different version of what happened. Cathy said that I’d said mean things to her in Dutch and was making fun of her in Dutch, so no one else but her could understand. She was smart enough to only tell these stories to colleagues who weren’t actually there for it.

Word got around and it turned into a bigger issue, with a couple people actually questioning my character, mostly just colleagues that don’t work very close to me. HR got wind of it after a while and I got called in close to a month after the incident.

They had already met with Cathy and she’d told them the “she cursed me out in Dutch and was very mean to me” story. I told them the full story and everything that happened after. They asked me if there was anyone else present who could confirm this,

so those colleagues came and told them that Cathy had lied about speaking a language, stormed out and then started calling me a b-word etc. to others. They thanked me for my time and I got on with work. Nothing happened until a week later when I was informed that Cathy was asked to leave.

Apparently Cathy had doubled down on the lies and told everyone I was the one lying and she did speak those languages, so my boss told her in that case she’d have no problem talking to one of our Canadian colleagues (who wasn’t involved in the situation) in French in front of him, just to confirm.

At this point Cathy admitted she had been lying. It turned out she didn’t speak a word of French either, or Norwegian, which was the third language she was lying about. This was enough for them to let her go, because part of the reason they hired her was that they were so impressed by her speaking multiple languages and work experiences she’d had abroad.

The work experiences were made up as well. I’m just happy it’s over. I’m confident it wasn’t really my fault it blew up now, if it wasn’t me who caught her in a lie, someone else probably would have down the line. The few people who kind of believed her ended up coming to me and apologizing for questioning me about what happened, so that’s all sorted

Check out how the community responded:

tiny_lolita −  Cathy at next job: okay, no common languages. I speak a dead language. Colleague: oh, really? Say something! Cathy, sweating: dead language as in speaking to the dead.. Colleague: ?? Cathy, panicked: I previously worked at the coroner’s office”

StAlvis −  I would **love** to know what was going through Cathy’s mind when **she decided to escalate** and **double-down** on the lies.

Chica711 −  I remember reading this and thinking “Why tf would someone lie about being able to speak another language?” It’s such an easily found out lie and it’s laughable haha

Pretend-Panda −  Thanks for updating! I was wondering how this would ultimately play out because Cathy seemed like the sort who wouldn’t know when to shut herself down and so it seemed inevitable HR was going to get involved sooner or later. Glad things went so well for you!

Abba_Zaba_ −  She only has herself to blame. She sounds like a s**iopath who gets by in life through lies and manipulation. Liars get used to having their lies believed, and they REALLLLY don’t like it when people call them on their lies. You didn’t even do it on purpose.

You just inadvertently exposed her with your VERY RUDE GUESTURE OF FRIENDSHIP /s. Sorry you caught trapped in her warpath. Hopefully moving forward your colleagues and supervisors can recall this experience as a testament to your integrity.

Sakawatchi −  And this is why I make sure to downplay my understanding of other languages to “I can sometimes kind of follow the theme” XD Lying about knowing a language you don’t know will 99% of the time come back and bite you in the a**

[Reddit User] −  Lmao she could’ve swallowed her pride and walked outta there with a job and 4 people knowing she’s an i**ot but she doubled down 5 times over and now the whole office, Reddit and my mum knows

Brian051770 −  I guess, If I lied about speaking multiple languages on a job application, AND THEY STILL HIRED ME, I would definitely not go around bragging about how many languages I can speak.

Slow_Owl −  Glad it was sorted but what a wild ride.

[Reddit User] −  Great outcome, as a Brit I can confirm that Northern Europe especially, is most definitely not exotic. You are quite correct in that, exotic is purely reserved for white sandy beaches and palm trees waving in a warm breeze to us Europeans.