Honesty is always the best policy, except when it's not. In theory, everyone loves a truth teller, but in reality - a lot of people expect sugarcoated white lies instead of complete honesty.
In general, sticking to the truth is the best way to live a life of integrity and trustworthiness. But there are times in the workplace when that honesty can deeply backfire, as well as loved ones who prefer politeness over transparency.
In a popular Reddit thread, people who strive to be honest at all times shared times it majorly backfired.
1. From workyaccount:
At my last job during training we had to do an "anonymous review" of our trainer. I was respectful and honest but it was not a good review of her. I explained why she was bad at training and how she wasn't receptive to questions. Little did I know "anonymous" meant anonymous to her, but not anonymous to the person reviewing.
The person reviewing it was the training supervisor and had chosen her as the lead trainer. He took my honest review as a criticism to the whole program and a criticism to his hiring ability. I was put under a microscope at that point and seen as a problem maker and was ultimately fired.
Once I was in a job interview and the owner (now a CEO of a large Australian corporation) asked me if I would lie in order to get his company more profits. I said no. He was incredulous.
I didn't get the job but I got a different one in the same company. A completely unqualified person got the job I was going for. Everyone I worked with hated the place. Hated. Hated. Hated. I have never seen such an unhappy workforce. I joined the exodus 6 weeks later.
About ten years ago, a friend and co-worker of mine was fired for something I did. I mean, he literally was not there when it happened. So he called HR, told them what had happened. HR called me and asked me to confirm. I even went to several managers trying to explain that I was in fact the one responsible, that my friend was not even at work when the incident happened, and even if he had been, I still would have been responsible because it was my doing.
Instead of rehiring my friend and writing me up, they just called me a liar and that was pretty much my reputation with the managers after that. The only time I ever actually lied to a manager while working there, it was because I was too embarrassed to tell my manager that I had hemorrhoids, so I just said I had a bug.
Not me, but a good friend of mine was working as a student teacher at a high school. He had saved up 3 or 4 sick days at the end of the year and decided he was going to use them to go camping and rock climbing. Instead of simply telling his boss he was sick, like a normal person, he told them he was going to use his sick days to go play outside and rock climb. Needless to say, they were not happy.
When I asked him wtf he was thinking, he said he was shocked they were upset that he was being honest with them.
Best friend since Middle School had started dating a girl end of high school life. Major drama queen stuff. She constantly accused him of cheating, snuck through his email account, flirted with guys to make him jealous, yelled and screamed all the time. Example: As a college freshman on break, after one of their many fights I followed her home to keep an eye on her as she threatened suicide before leaving. It was a toxic relationship—from hatred to makeout in seconds at any time.
Eventually in my sophomore year of college they broke up. Of course he is all about how she is the worst human in the world, how free he is, etc.
Fast forward one year later and neither have found anyone. He calls one day to say that he is back with her and head over heels. They are almost immediately engaged. All his friends think it is a bad idea but keep quiet. I pulled him aside and let him know that while I would always be there for him, this was stupid. She was not good for him; it would not last; it was too fast. This would crash and burn. He needed to pump the brakes.
He of course told her what I said and she blew up. He ghosted me and we stopped being friends. Didn’t talk for years, and when we run into each other in town even now (20 years later) it is awkward. (More for him than me because...)
Five years later, with two kids, they each cheated on the other. They divorced. He is now married to her former best friend and she slept with one of his friends before moving as payback.
Just a total, trashy disaster. And everyone could see it coming. Still think I did the right thing, but it made no difference and in the end, the only measurable result was that our friendship ended.
A teacher asked me who broke the laptop on her desk. I told her I think she did when she put the projector down on it for a minute while she was getting the cart ready.
I got in trouble for lying, breaking the computer, talking back, and acting out in class. My dad had to show up and blow a gasket at the principal before they un-punished me and admitted put a 30lb projector on top of an apple laptop wasn't a good idea and that the dent on the back of the screen did look a bit like the circular foot on the projector. The principal said my teacher would apologize for yelling at me in front of the class but she never did. F*ck you Mrs. H, Where's my apology?
My “BFF” had two boys and they both spoke with speech impediments - they couldn’t pronounce their R’s, like that character on The Big Bang. Their elementary school tried getting them into speech therapy but, she wouldn’t allow it because she thought their speech impediments were “cute”. I asked her if she ever heard an adult speak like that and I was basically dead to her from that day on.
As a true friend, you need to keep it 100% with them, anyone who doesn’t isn’t a true friend. I dgaf what she thinks, keeping her kids from getting the therapy they clearly needed (and was free through the school) is straight up abuse. They’re 15 and 16 now and still talk like that.
When I was in junior high, my close friend who lived in my neighborhood was being beaten by her parents, I was riding my bike one night past their house and heard it. She admitted it too.
I told my adjustment counselor at school. The counselor (unethically and illegally) told my friend that I had "tattled". DCF got involved but as usual, never did much about it
I am still fairly bitter that the counselor didn't lose her job over it.
I almost lost one of my best friends when I honestly told her what I thought about her new relationship. She had previously been in a disasterous relationship with a partner who would constantly take advantage of her. She paid all the bills, constantly loaned her partner money and got emotionally abused. Her new boyfriend lost his job and was seriously bad at adulting. Missed deadlines lead to missed opportunities, he blamed everyone else for his dismal financial situation, didn't make an effort to get a job and he complained and whined a lot to her.
Like her previous partner he started to get really depended on her and clingy. So when my friend and I talked about different things, this topic popped up. I told her honestly that she had this strange need to fix people which leads her to get involved with partners who will use her to fix their problems or just unload all of their emotional issues on her. At this point I was the one she turned to whenever she got frustrated, so I recognized the pattern.
Anyway, she wasn't thrilled. Basically told me I had no idea and no right to talk about her relationship – despite me being the emotional garbage bin she had used to unload all her stress in. We didn't speak for months until she and her boyfriend broke up and she admitted that I've had a point.
I’m not the most honest person ever, but I did choose to tell my mum the truth about my father. I found out that he was cheating on her, for about 2 months, when I was using his phone. And I thought about it for a few weeks, and decided that my mum deserved to know, so I told her. It destroyed her, pretty much. She lost it and had a psychotic break. My younger brother was pretty messed up about that too, because seeing your parents fight everyday isn’t the best when you’re 10.
I don’t regret it, but the consequences weren’t pretty.
One time we noticed a dent in the family car which we used to go to school, my dad was under a lot of pressure at the time and no one wanted to trouble him with this so older brother and mom convinced me to take it to a local shop to have them fix it which eventually I caved and did.
Walking back home after dropping the car my dad's store was on the way so I decided to stop by and tell him everything, and man did I get yelled at, suddenly I was blamed for everything and he made sure I know it, he was mostly pissed because the shop guy is in fact an idiot who would probably f*ck it up even more.
After he was done yelling at me he called the guy and told him not to touch the car then he decided to tell me that the dent was in fact happened while he was using the car.
TL:DR: got yelled at after confessing for trying to fix dent of unknown origins in car by my dad, turns out it was his fault.
In middle school, we had this science teacher who was a pretty cool guy, veteran, wrote poetry, overall nice. But on this one assignment, he asked at one point "what grade do you think you should get?" Not wanting to oversell myself, I said a 90%.
All these other people who had done much less on the assignment put 100s and I thought he would ridicule them for saying that bad work was an A+. When we got the papers back, everyone got exactly what they gave themselves.
There's a lesson in here somewhere, but I am not quite sure of what it is yet.
My mom liked using the phrase "if you're crying, you're lying" when I was little. I had (... And still have) trouble keeping my emotions steady during stressful conversations, so this kind of shit happened a few times:
-something happens around the house and mom gets upset
-mom confronts me asking if I'm responsible
-I say no, but being accused makes me upset and I cry
-"if you're crying, you're lying!"
-I get punished, sometimes without even knowing what I did wrong
I got my driving license taken away from me. I live in the UK. Last January i had an epiphany about my life that led me to quit drinking and smoking and start on the road to becoming a paramedic.
In applying for the hgv license the job requires a doctor asked me if I'd ever had any alcohol problems. I said yes and explained how I had quit some 4 months before so i could turn my life around. Then I had blood tests which were obviously clear.
A couple of months later the DVLA contacted me to say not only could I not have the hgv license but they were taking away my standard driving license too. I have never had any driving offenses or indeed any offenses of any kind.
So they punished me simply for telling the truth about how I quit.
I'm still trying to get it back. If they don't overturn this decision it may prevent me from ever reaching my goal.
I witnessed a fight in middle school. I went to tell a teacher. We (the two fighters and I) went to the room where punished students go during class time to talk stuff over. We sit in desks and wait. I think I'm gonna tell the teacher what happened and clear things up quickly. One hour passes, and I miss my favorite class. Then the teacher calls all three of us to the front. He says a quick sentence to the fighting students and then gives me mine.
"So next time there's a fight, what are you supposed to do?"
Me: "Uhhhh…tell the teacher?".
So yes, I was sent to the counseling room for daring to attempt doing what they wanted me to do.
Every time I tell my mom or sis how the food tastes. They ask me and I'm like: "It's good, but it kinda tastes a little like soap." They were spitting mad, but weeks later my mom admitted that it was because she put too much ginger into the soup.
A good friend of mine, to that time, got engaged with her girlfriend and she asked me, what my opinion was and I said, that I don't think that was a smart move, because they only knew each other for a few weeks. She was pissed at me for several weeks. Dumb f*ck.
There was the time my entire class was given a weeks worth of detention, at break, lunch, and after school because someone decided to throw a felt tip pen across the room, and the incredibly old teacher who should have retired about 15 years before hand walked into its flight path. Somehow the felt tip of the pen cut her cheek. It was minor, there was a single drop of blood. You'd have thought that there was a school shooter by the way she reacted.
Everyone was busy working hard on a history test, except 2 people. At the time no one knew what happened, we just heard a blood curdling scream. You'd have thought the teacher had been disembowled by how much it shocked the entire class. The neighbouring 5 classes heard it and thought someone had been killed.
By the time we had realised what happened, the headteacher was in the room threatening all of us with police involvement for assault.
When he said that, the 2 guys responsible came forward and one said that they chucked the pen to their mate so he could highlight a passage in his book, and the teacher walked in its path at the exact wrong time, but the headteacher didn't believe them.
The worst thing was that the headteacher thought the entire class was covering for the 2 guys that actually did it, even after those guys tried to clear the rest of the classes names. So Everyone ended up with a weeks detention, and the guys responsible were internally excluded for a week and then had detention for another week.
I used to be best friends with the guy that chucked the pen in middle school, and although we were in the same form room in high school, we had drifted apart a little bit, but I still knew when he was telling the truth or lying, and he WAS telling the truth about the teacher walking in the way at the wrong time. He personally appologised to everyone in the class for getting them in trouble.
EDIT: Loads of you have pointed out that collective punishment is against the Geneva convention, I'm pretty sure that collective punishment is only applicable to war under the Geneva convention, and besides no one in my class of 13/14 year olds were aware of the intricacies of the Geneva convention.
I got "Laid off" (read 'fired nicely').
I worked on a software development team for a company that makes bar games. The owner got this "idea" that we would try to put a wifi AP inside the cabinets of the machines and make it a hotspot and allow people to connect for a fee. So I get called into the meeting. Immediately there's tons of reasons it doesn't make sense. If the bar has wifi, nobody will use it (and most will have wifi). Cell data plans are negligible so people won't use the wifi. They suggested we try and partner with verizon and put a cell data hotspot in there. "Who will pay the bill? Because those charge on data used and it'll be A LOT of data in a public place." "The bar owner".
Um, no? Add to this, comcast (who control an overwhelming portion of the market) had just started to roll out their xfinity hotspot thing that makes basically every consumer modem/router they issue into a wifi hotspot for comcast customers (so everybody). There was no money to be made and only a lot of dev time to waste. So I argued against it pretty hard. I called it asinine and stupid. Eventually I was shuffled out of the meeting and the "Yes man" version of me was brought in. Couple weeks later I was let go.
I was the one to disclose the infidelity in a long term relationship.
The party at fault was my friend that I had known for years. Over time, I became close with his girlfriend as we all used to hang out a lot. She's a super sweet girl, really smart, one of those girls where you wonder what he must do to keep her around because she could have any guy she wants.
Anyway, I witnessed the start of it first hand. Whenever she was out of town for work, which was every few weeks or so, he would go out to the bars and he'd get pretty flirty with women. Nothing over the line, but it was obvious what he was doing. Well, you can only hit on so many women before one of them take you up on the offer.
Started having a fling with what seemed like the typical young naive college girl. I guess he just assumed that I'd consider this a matter of the "bro code" and ignore it. After I realized what was going on I brought it up to him and he told me he was ending it, but was still going to tell his girlfriend anyway.
Well, some more time went by and it became clear to me that this fling had not ended. I'm not sure exactly how often they were getting together, but it continued to happen even after she got back.
I texted her and asked if I could come over to grab something I left at their place (a lie). I knew he wasn't home during the day, and I wanted to do it in person, so this was pretty much the best time. She was devastated. Completely turned her world upside down. I wasn't aware but apparently she was actively turning down jobs so she could stay with him in the area.
I helped her pack up some of her stuff and she moved in with her girlfriend before he even got home from work. He found out pretty quickly it was me that exposed him. He took it as an unforgivable betrayal. Something about me not having the right to mess with other people's relationships. He accused me of wanting to sleep with his girlfriend (true from a physiological standpoint) but I had made zero attempts and I'm honestly just not that kind of guy.
We haven't spoken in a little over two years and I'd say our friendship is very much severed. The few mutual friends we have tell me he talks sh*t about me anytime I come up. I honestly don't miss the friendship that much. He could be a really fun guy to hangout with, but as someone that has been cheated on in the past, it's almost impossible for me to just stand around and watch that happen to someone.
His ex took one of those offers and got a really good job out of state. We still keep in touch.