Coworker story
Her: Do we get Halloween as a paid day off?
Me: … No, why would we get Halloween off? We don’t get 4th of July off and that’s an actual official holiday.
Her: My last job gave everyone Halloween off! We all got paid time off for it!
Then she wandered off and I still don’t know what job gives you Halloween off.
Wisdom comes with age.
I worked for a pathological liar. And believed her for a long time, we all did. Until we started comparing stories, and all realized that not only was she piling lie upon lie, but THEY WERE OF NO BENEFIT TO HER.
(For instance, she’d mentioned a couple of degrees that she’d actually never gotten… and from schools that it was unlikely she’d ever attended. Now, did having those degrees make any difference in her getting hired? NO. Becoming a supervisor? NO. Did any degree past a BS make one cent of difference in her salary? NO.)
That’s the part that blew my mind. She had such a compulsion that she’d just automatically lie, even when telling the truth would’ve been easier.
Eventually, a separate set of lies got her fired. She’d been working with freelance videographers on our biggest client’s project, but it turned out she’d been having them work on her own movie that she was pitching to a studio. And the client’s project was sitting there with no progress for months. (Just now, it occurred to me that her movie probably had no studio interest.)
When our owner started investigating all the lies, I got called in to “testify”.
I told the truth, and fifteen minutes later, she was escorted out of the building.
I’ve always suspected that my (pretty damning) testimony was the last straw… and I feel pretty good about that.
I can think of any number of reality-stretching fibs by certain members of the U.S. House, but I assume you are referring to grandiose lies we’ve been told personally.
In that case, there was a guy in my dorm, sophomore year, who was from a troubled Middle Eastern country I won’t specify. As the group of us became closer he eventually confided that his family was involved in the highest echelons of that country’s leadership.
Slowly it came out that an unofficial line of succession existed there, and once he returned, U.S. educated, to his native land, he would be on track to become its leader.
It was heartbreaking to me when this pleasant and seemingly selfless young man was arrested for trespassing late at night in an off-limits area of the local airport and greeted the Police with, “are you here to take me to President Carter?”
(Happy ending: he did get therapy and was fairly soon back on track without the delusions.)
There was the guy my sister dated who was allegedly a top-level Navy Seal at barely age 18. He had done all these undercover missions but couldn’t talk about any of it. I had to laugh at the time he illegally parked his car and thought he could get out of a ticket by putting his sort of but not really military-looking hat on his dashboard… because no cop would dare to ticket a Navy Seal. He got a ticket. 
Fortunately my sister wised up and dumped him before too long.
I’ll tell ya later…
Be all that you can be…
When she was about 6-7, my sister got to go to her first sleepaway camp. In order to go, she needed to have recent physical exam results. So, my mom schedules an appointment. My other sister and I, fulfilling our obligation as older siblings, started telling her stories of the horrors of getting a physical examination. We told her that the blood pressure cuff worked by sinking thousands of needles into your arm and you could tell this was true, because you could hear them being ripped out of your arm when it was taken off.
So, during the exam, they go to take her blood pressure and she refuses to let them. They demonstrate it on the nurse, on the doctor, and even call my mom in and demonstrate it on her. All my sister hears are the needles being ripped out.
The resolution was that finally my mom lays down the law. If she doesn’t allow her blood pressure to be taken, no sleepaway camp. My mom opens the door to the examination room and beckons my sister out. At that point, her desire for camp overcame her fear of the needles and she permitted the cuff. Boy, was she mad at us on the ride home (mom wasn’t very happy either).
As far as being lied to, when I was just out of grad school, the division of the company I had joined had to make some budget cuts to their research budget mid-year. I got called into a meeting with the division manager, who assured me that my research budget was much too small to make much difference, so I shouldn’t worry. Guess whose budget was zeroed?
Mom once told me, “you’re the best little boy in the world.”
I thought that would extend to my being the best middle-aged man, and best old-man, too. I was lied to. 
One that my Dad convinced me of was that you can tell what someone is thinking by looking closely into someone’s iris (the colored part of the eye) and an image of what they are thinking will appear. That image is what they are thinking about.
I did this multiple times with Dad, and my older brother and sister (who were in on the prank), and it worked every time. Wow!
Young minds think they see things that aren’t really there. So, I’d see something like a lion in Dad’s iris. “You’re thinking about a lion, Dad!”
“That’s exactly right, son!”
Well, I tried this with my teacher and college kindergarten classmates, and they all thought I was an idiot. 
I wasn’t trying to lie.
When my kids were little we were talking about weight loss and diets, and I said “I did lose 8lb13oz in a day once” and my sister in law said “Oh my gosh, how?”. I just pointed to my (8lb 13oz at birth) son.
Not sure about worst, but most unbelievable.
Was being Mr Mum whilst Real Mum was away with more urgent things for a couple of months. Three kids aged 8, 6 & 4. Doing OK, without setting any records.
One evening the 8yo said he wanted to go to bed early. Which was unusual and I should have picked up on it. I just took it as a little win which would allow me to fix a few things with the younger siblings.
A couple of hours later I went to his room to check-in, and on opening the door there was a distinctive and unpleasant smell. He’d been violently ill and dinner, which just happened to be pasta, had been violently projected everywhere. In the bed. On the bed. On the floor. On the walls. He looked like he was being attacked by the killer giant maggots from out of space. And, bless him, he’d decided that the best thing to do was to try and get back to sleep. Without much success.
I went over to his bed, and with full parental concern for him and the mess created, asked “Are you OK, little man?” He looked at me straight in the eye, though this was slightly obscured by the Spaghetti Calabrese exuding from his hair, and oozing down his face and in totally sincere denial said “It wasn’t me, Dad!”.
At that moment I realised that Bill Watterson (of Calvin and Hobbes fame) wasn’t creating a comic strip so much as writing a documentary on childhood behavior.
“I’ll love and be with you forever!” - Every ex
“…to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part.” - Every divorcee
“Me bitter?, No!!!” - Me
LOL
Summer of '77 I was too young to see Star Wars but I knew of it and the official Star Wars toys were a common sight in the neighborhood already - also possible this was the following summer once the mechandising process had gone through a Christmas cycle. Anyhow, one of the somewhat older kids in the neighborhood (probably 6-ish to my just turned 3) had a toy lightsaber and convinced me that if he hit me with the “saber” part of it or I touched that part I’d disappear. And I totally believed him, didn’t dare touch it or ran in opposite direction if he threatened me with it.
When I was psych nursing a patient suffering from dementia approached to tell me, in hushed tones, “Someone’s done a shit in my pants.”
In my first year of med school, we shared a dormitory with law students (note: don’t play poker with them, they cheat 
). One law student who we hang around with was quite a unique fellow. Quite bright, quite outgoing, quite a braggart, and quite tall. He looked like a dead ringer for Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein monster (and didn’t seem to mind his nickname, Frankenstein).
Anyway, this guy’s boasted accomplishments (many) included things that just sounded completely far-fetched for someone like him. I forget most of what he bragged about, but one that I remember was that he claimed to have test-piloted F-16 jets. Some of his claims, upon fact-checking, proved to be true, but we could never verify the pilot claim (isn’t there a height limit for jet pilots?). But, the mental image of Frankenstein flying a fighter jet stuck with me.
It’s pretty tall. Something like 6”5’.
In the same spirit :
I’m an open book for you.
Translation : “I’ll reveal a few tidbits of my past to gain your trust, but the really important chapters will forever remain stapled shut.”
Give me time and space and I’ll open up.
Translation : “Give me all the benefits of being in a committed relationship, but don’t ever dare asking me to keep a single promise.”
When my kids were little, I’d peel clementines for them. One time one of them commented on how I always removed the skin in one piece. I explained that if the skin didn’t come off in one piece it meant the clementine was bad and should be thrown away.
For some reason they both believed this into early adulthood.
I too have had some wacky co-workers.
The guy whose ship sank when he was in the Navy. He rode back to shore on the back of a whale.
The guy who ran grenades in Serbia and dated a lady wrestler.
The gal who was repeatedly absent from work with creative excuses. Once she had to stay home because she got sprayed by a skunk. The next day, of course, she smelled fine.
Another coworker.
He was part of our group of friends who all worked at the supervisor level of a big box retailer. Claimed he only worked there (full time) for something to do since he was already wealthy from his real job… an international male model. International in that we probably have never seen his work since it was mainly in Europe and Asia. Did he have any headshots or a portfolio of his work? Of course not. According to him doing so would be vain when you get to that level of the profession.
He lived with his grandmother in a gated community but claimed the house was his and he LET his grandmother live there cause he was such a nice grandson.
Oh. And he was also very good friends with Johnny Depp and talked with him often.