Honesty, Again, Again.

Honesty:  Honestly, I can't even bring myself to look up the definition of this word one more time.  The page that has the definition of honesty is dog-eared and cross-referenced and covered in notes and check marks.  I should have the definition committed to memory.  It won't help me to look up the definition one more time.

One of my friends gave me a call this week, upset about an incident at work.  He was supposed to deliver 10 items to a customer and realized that he was an item short.  Instead of informing his customer and changing the invoice to reflect the correct amount - the right but embarrassing thing to do - he decided that he would replace the omitted item on his next delivery.  I understand the thinking here: everything was going to be made right in the end, his customer none the wiser, and he wouldn't look foolish for messing up the order.  Technically, he was being honest; strictly speaking, he wasn't.

As he was leaving the store the inventory manager approached him and pointed out his mistake.  He tried to explain how he planned to correct the mistake the next day but he just looked like a dishonest delivery guy, a liar and a cheat who was trying to talk his way out of an unpleasant situation with more justification and more lies.  There really isn't any good way to extricate yourself from a lie that you've been caught in. You look like a liar who got caught and is trying to talk his way out of it.   There is nothing more distasteful than listening to a liar who got caught red-handed talk a mile a minute

I spent most of my waking hours enmeshed in those kind of situations in the past.  No matter how much explaining I did I got that distinct, shitty feeling that someone was looking at me and thinking: "This dude is a liar."  Once you get caught lying it's really, really hard to earn that trust back.  My friend's customer used to let him stock the shelves unsupervised, signing the invoice he presented without checking the inventory.  Not any more - someone from the store trails him as he makes his delivery, inconvenient for everyone involved.

This is why I try to tell the truth today.  Not because I enjoy telling the truth but because I really, really  hate getting caught in a lie.  I still do it sometimes, usually not deliberately, but I still do it.  Some bullshit will come flying out of my mouth before I can get it stopped.  I'm usually trying to appear smarter than I am, just like my friend.  I'm afraid of looking foolish or incompetent.  I'm afraid of making mistakes.

I'm still a pretty good liar.