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[HORN]

Perhaps if he was a decent guy who's appointment had enhanced the department I wouldn't be so mithered.

But in short, he's a prick who lies about even the most trivial of things. Other members of the department use his surname as a byword for a untruth.

Recently it's emerged that he appears to be lying about rather more significant stuff. He claims to have played first class rugby - fair enough, of course, but telling one person he played centre then telling another he played flanker aroused suspicions. A cursory check of the rugby club's website makes no mention of this remarkably versatile former player.

He was appointed to his current position on the strength of the reference he received from his previous employer and superb qualifications. The previous employer was hugely relieved to be shot of him, which I can understand, but on the small matter of his qualifications - I'm no chemist, but would someone who has a PHD in chemistry stare blankly back at you when he's asked the boiling point of ethanol?

In short, I'm very interested in verifying this total toerag's qualifications on-line. Presumably there's a register of PHDs sitting on a server somewhere, but Google hasn't helped.

[EIM]

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Drag him outside and kick his lying teeth in.

What was his dissertation on? Maybe you can trip him up on this?

[ursus arctos]

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At least in the US, universities will usually confirm to you over the phone whether they have a record of someone having attended and received a degree, especially if you claim to be checking references and/or a journalist.

I don't think that there is any central repository of Ph.D's (there certainly isn't in the US).

Does he have a list of publications that you could try to verify?

[Moonlight Shadow]

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Phone his uni, say you work for HR at such and such firm and ask confirmation of his qualifications.

[Stumpy Pepys]

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Yeah, phone his uni. A friend had a temp job phoning universities to check qualifications. She said about one-third of people were lying on their cvs.

[EIM]

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I'm thinking of doing it.

[beak]

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DO IT.

Even if you don't confront him with it, it could be a useful something to have in your back pocket if he turns out as much of a cunt as he sounds.

[Ek weet nie]

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I'd be careful how you go about exposing him if it turns out he is lying. You could end up looking as bad as him to the powers that be in your organisation if you handle it the wrong way.

[Femme Folle]

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He sounds a bit pathological. I'd proceed with caution.

[David Agnew]

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Nil a fhios agam wrote:

I'd be careful how you go about exposing him if it turns out he is lying. You could end up looking as bad as him to the powers that be in your organisation if you handle it the wrong way.

So give them the name of your HR boss, and ask them if they could just quickly confirm it in writing by fax.

[Otto Katz]

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Do it, and if it turns out he's lied, use the information to blackmail him into giving you a raise, a promotion and two months paid holiday per year.

Like Ed Norton did in Fight Club (or was it Kevin Spacey American Beauty?)

[Moonlight Shadow]

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They both did it, Norton by beating himself up and Spacey by pretending there was some sexual shenanigans going on.

[Banana Banana]

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You forget the first rule of bureaucracies - those in power are always right and will protect each other especially when they are wrong.

My advice - either sit on your hands until he leaves or look for a new job. Even if you succeeded in bringing him down, your card will be forever marked as a troublemaker or as a smartarse. You'll have an enemy for life and a senior management who won't trust you and will warn his successor about you.

Learn from my mistakes...

[Guest]

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Horn, if he is this much of a bullshitter then he will eventually blunder his way out of the job all by himself, either through incompetence or by telling one lie too many. Don't do anything.

[beak]

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Do it, so I can vicarioulsy live in a world of high-stakes office politics.

[The Purple Cow]

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look up his name on www.scopus.com

If he's a PhD he must have published some papers.

[Eggchaser]

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He claims to have played first class rugby - fair enough, of course, but telling one person he played centre then telling another he played flanker aroused suspicions.

Not entirely impossible. There are players who have flitted between playing as a battering ram outside centre and playing as a battering ram blindside flanker, but they tend to be Pacific Islanders for some reason.

[Brandenburger Toro]

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If he's a PhD he must have published some papers.

Not necessarily. I know plenty without. Some (toppermost of the poppermost) universities will even discourage publication before completion.

If you know the name of the University, though, they'll be happy to confirm or deny it. It's essential to the function of a degree that award/possession of one is a matter of public record.

[imp]

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I thought a preposterous braggart was as much a part of the office furniture as the broken coffee machine. There was always one wherever I worked (back in my career days) - a Dixons sales assistant who claimed he'd won quarter of a million quid off a previous company in damages after falling off a ladder. An aesthetically challenged middle-aged secretary at BP who claimed to have once been a professional model. A charming young fogey at a news agency who'd insert obviously doctored pictures of semi-famous doublebarrel-named fogies into his photo collections and show them around the office pretending they were his friends. The company director at a publishing house who claimed he used to play for West Ham, but the record books said otherwise. All great people because they gave the rest of us something to snicker and bitch about in the course of our miserable, tedious working days.

[Soccer Scrimmage]

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When I was living in Istanbul, I used to frequent an internet cafe which employed a fellow to go fetch things, sweep up, etc. This glorified maid claimed to have degrees from Heidelberg and Yale. When the owner of the cafe, tired of the guy's constant bullshit, asked to see his degrees, the fellow claimed he had lost them. After the owner told him to call and get copies, the guy said he couldn't do that because there had been fires at both Yale and Heidelberg's archives and records of both his degrees had been destroyed.

The guy was let go. I worried about him for a bit, but then realized someone so well-educated wouldn't have a problem finding work.

This same guy, before he was fired, once asked me how one becomes a mercenary in Iraq. I guess being American qualified me to answer such a question.

One day he also told me, breathlessly, that the previous evening he had gotten an email telling him that he had won the British lottery, and only needed to send in a few documents to claim his reward. I warned him it was a scam, but he assured me he had checked it all out.

I used to chuckle thinking about the con artist's reaction when he realized that the guy who had finally fallen for his scam was some penniless Turkish nutcase.