The Office Shit-Talker

If talking shit was an artform then Dan painted the Sistine Chapel in pure bull excrement. A benefit-of-the-doubt parasite that feeds off people’s natural tendency to be polite and not call him out for being so full of shit he doubles as a septic tank.

Dan gets to work and is desperate to drop some Whoppers like he was a 3am Hungry Jacks brawl. He interrupts a coworker chatting about a succesful date he went on, “that’s nothing mate, should’ve seen what I managed on Saturday. A coworker reluctantly indulges him, “oh?” Dan’s lie-processor starts churning like a 2003 PC with terminal Limewire-itis,

“Well, I’m not an electrician, but I’m petty good on the tools, so I was helping my neighbour with some wiring, and she had a friend over. So I said, instead of paying me, how about we all go for a skinny dip, the rest my friends, is history my friends”

True, not “history” in the sense of a factual recollection of past events, but more like the kind of “history” that North Korea would write in their propaganda booklets to cover up systemic allegations of human rights abuse.

After work, Dan catches up with a new group of mates who are not yet accustomed to his unique brand of blithering nonsense. The group’s unofficial alpha-male begins a story about his boat party on the weekend.

Dan kinda listens while madly orchestrating his own symphony of lies to one-up this slick storyteller. The moment the bloke has finished, Dan initiates the dance of the pathological liar,

“get this, the other month I was partying on one of James Packer’s boats, totally wild, tables covered in cocaine, topless glamours serving drinks and snorting lines off each other’s tits”.

No one knows Dan well enough to call him a liar, so the show rolls on,

“I reckon I’d had about 2 grams of coke and at least a carton of piss by this stage, I can handle my drugs, so I was fine, and because I used to drive boats in the Greek Islands I had to help the captain moor the yacht! Wild man, wild”.

The air is thick with disbelief, and the one-upped man breaks his silence, “that’s a bit of a stretch mate, did that really happen?” Dan goes into full Jay from inbetweeners mode and launches an offensive strike, “yeh? Wanna make a bet? I’ll call my mate right now, wanna make a bet?”.

No Dan, they barely want to talk to you

Documenting the Human Zoo is thirsty work, so if you enjoyed what you read how about buying Belle a beer, ay?

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