“So can you provide me with the W-2s from your last job to prove you actually earned that much,” said the employer to the applicant as he explored the resume that had been emailed a week earlier. According the March 8th BusinessInsider.com, 31% of people lie on their resumes, and salary mis-facts can be found in 27% of resumes (according to the more pessimistic jobacle.com, which claims that 43% of all resumes are fudged), noting that lying seems to begin in infants as early as at 6 months.
Yup, and BusinessInsider reported a poll that suggests that 75% of women lie about money-related matters to husbands, boyfriends and family. Most of us, 60% if you need a number (but I might be lying), think that we can explain our way out of the misstatement if caught. Even in the poll, 13% of the surveyed group indicated that they had lied in the poll itself… but if you are a liar and you say you are lying, are you really telling the truth? And shouldn’t we be worried about the other 87%?
We even lie to our doctors about whether we are taking a pill or following the recommended advice… 40% of the time (a figure that drops to a mere 30% when it comes to diet matters and exercise). There appears to be at least one lie in every ten minutes of conversation for 60% of the nation; I guess the pollsters weren’t covering the District of Columbia, particularly not Capitol Hill! It appears to be easier to lie on the phone than in face-to-face conversations! Damn that eye contact!
Gender applies its own rules as men lie twice as much as women: six times versus three times a day. I wonder what the numbers are when it comes to…er… size! “I’m fine!” is a lie for both sexes, it seems. But lying in business or to get a job seems to trump most serious situations as the BIG ONE. Jobacle.com, noted above, goes on to say that Canadians exaggerate the extent of their true scope of work in their past jobs 19% of the time, and 12% of those polled on both sides of the border actually fabricated credentials… like that’s hard to discover these days… or is it? Who even asks? 17% even make up skills they don’t have… like speaking another language. You’d think that one would be way too easy to spot, but hey…. Sooner or later, particularly on the big ticket resume items, folks do get caught.
But I really fell in love with this “answer” to lying statistics on wiki.answers.com: “12% of adults admit to telling lies ‘sometimes’ or "’often.’ The profession with the highest number of liars is teaching, with 65% admitting to telling lies, and a surprising 18% telling surveyors that they tell lies ‘routinely.’ The most dishonest time of day is between 9 and 9:30 in the evening, with the early hours of the morning most likely to reveal the truth. Australians are the most honest people in the world, followed closely by Norwegians, Swedes and Belgians. On the other hand, Wales has by far the highest percentage of liars (93%), and the lowest percentage of people who actually admitted to being economical with the truth (a mere 1%). When asked the question ‘are you a liar?’ nearly 97% of people answer ‘no.’ When the remaining 3% (self-confessed liars) are subjected to questions calibrating their real, rather than perceived honesty, they turn out to be, on average, 28 times more honest than the people who claimed they never lied. The most profligate liar in history was US president Richard Nixon, who researchers found to have lied on record 837 times on a single day.” Always wondered where he got the nickname, “Tricky Dicky.” I guess Nixon really was the “one.”
I’m Peter Dekom, and… oh damn… teachers??????!!!!
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