Cheating in life?

Ted_YNWA

Bull$hit can get you to the top, but it won't keep you there.

kippy

Ted_YNWA wrote: »

Bull$hit can get you to the top, but it won't keep you there.

That is not true in a lot if cases.

Ted_YNWA

kippy wrote:

That is not true in a lot if cases.

You need a bit of smarts to follow up on it.

david75

Ted_YNWA wrote: »

Bull$hit can get you to the top, but it won't keep you there.

I know the full length of that joke and it’s brilliant. (The farmer the crow and the bull in the field and the shotgun)

But it is true.

You can actually blag your way into any job. And 90% of jobs no matter what they are are doable by anyone with even a bit of cop on.

I’m not endorsing it as I wouldn’t have the balls to even attempt it but a great many people at least weren’t qualified to get into the positions they hold.

wexandproud

NollagShona wrote: »

OP: Life’s not fair!

Accept that and live your own life

there was a thread here a while back about best advice you were given or something like that , and I posted in it that i was told
'' The world is not flat , it's crooked . just accept it and get on with it ''
I would imagine that most people on here , if the opportunity arose , would pull a bit of a stroke if it suited them

ChikiChiki

If you can talk the talk nevermind walking the walk. Being forward and engaging people goes a long way to success.

Unfortunately it often leader to the quieter higher achievers being overlooked for promotions etc. A lot of decision makers seem to be blinded by getting their egos massaged and the ****e talk.

mariaalice

Before anyone get carried away with being a spoofer, or cheating is grand.

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/students-who-sat-each-others-leaving-cert-paper-fined-200-26872003.html

Now the fine was tiny, however for the rest of their lives one click of a mouse and the information is there...some employer a quick check of there name and that comes up.

mariaalice

Also a lot of middle management type jobs do contain a lot of bull...t, so its not spoofing as such, luck and happy accident come in to it a lot as well.

CrankyHaus

doolox wrote: »

Its very probable that heavily regulated sectors such as medicine, nursing and engineering where there is a binding legal obligation on employers to vet the credentials of their staff, score better in this department as they can be prosecuted if they get it wrong and a farrier ends up doing brain surgery.....

Medicine may have less chancers but it still has some. A doctor in a rural hospital told me a few stories of doctors hired who their colleagues quickly realised lacked basic knowledge, and at least one they believed wasn't qualified. HSE admin and HR is often poor, doctors don't want to work in rural hospitals and staffing requirements must be met.

Drumpot

I have “the gift of the gab” as it’s called but I also have an unfortunately unhelpful moral compass that doesn’t allow me to use it at others expense.

This world is horribly shallow , fickle and ruled by optics. The older I get , the more I realize how much perception matters to people and shapes their views (including professional opinions).

I think if you can take a “life’s fair game” approach you can get anywhere in life. It actually sounds liberating and has to inspire an unmerited confidence in scenarios that the OP has highlighted.

Interesting use of word cheat because I think the government “cheated” by bailing out banks and banks continue “cheating” with no real ramifications for their rogue actions. Then the government goes after “welfare frauds” who, despite their cheating, didn’t nearly collapse our economy. Cheating is just a human instinct it seems, with the question being what will you justify in your pursuit of your goals. Society selectively decides what cheating is ok and what is not.

Dakota Dan

This is the ultimate cheat. He did have a commercial pilots licence but it expired and he was never qualified to fly passenger planes.

https://www.google.ie/amp/s/gizmodo.com/5540789/the-guy-who-flew-thousands-of-passengers-as-a-fake-pilot/amp

sbsquarepants

Life is tough - you have to play the cards your dealt. It's not a level playing ground, that's just how it is, you do what you have to do to get where you need to be.

Maybe Tristan goes to college for 5 or 6 years, studied his little arse off and got a degree or a masters or whatever, well done Tristan.

Maybe Anto can't do that, he doesn't have the resources or whatever - but Anto is just as smart and as capable as Tristan, he just doesn't have the head start that Tristan does, (through no fault of either his nor Tristans) so he tells a little fib or pulls a little stroke and gets himself on in life. Well done Anto.

Odds are Tristans Daddy or Granddaddy once done exactly what Anto did, and in any case it serves Tristan right for having such a wanky name!:D

Permabear

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mikhail

worded wrote: »

Austranaut .... all you need is a space suit and a rocket

razorblunt

Reminds me of this. Who would have noticed the lads stopped a foot short if he pic wasn't taken.

na1

55k per anum for sitting in an office playing solitaire and drinking coffee!


90% of IT manages and directors do that.

wakka12

Well, the ability to convince somebody you have the degree/knowledge/experience is a very important skill in of itself, good for them. For most of us though we do need to experience or knowledge in order to appear competent in the job, so don't feel bad about it. Most of us do it the hard way.

TomSweeney

pemay wrote: »

Read through the thread on the woman who was scamming the social welfare system, got me thinking about the various cheats I know/have come across.

Just a couple off the top of my head...

know one girl who literally pretended she had such and such a degree. Got her a fairly nice job and springboarded her into her current life.

Another few people I know just pretended they had years of experience (job required 10 years senior experience, they had NONE!) All worked out grand.

Know plenty of people of cheated in exams etc. And this is from a wide circle of people from all parts of the world, independent of each other. So its not just that I know a load of chancers!

The worst thing is that after spoofing it brazenly, they continue a little while longer, and hey presto, now they ACTUALLY have the experience and keep trotting along.

Seriously demotivating. You break your balls and pay hefty fees and live like a schmuck to get a degree, or spend years grinding in crappy jobs.......another person spends 1 minute typing it on a c.v.

Why bother doing anything ffs :P

Any interesting examples from others?

As Joe Pesci in Casino says
"If you had any heart you'd be out stealing for a living"

so true, everyone at the top is doing it, if I had any balls i'd be doing the same.

na1

Steorn -the Irish "Free Energy" company:

In August 2006, Steorn placed an advertisement in The Economist saying that they had developed a technology that produced "free, clean and constant energy"

In May 2015, Steorn put an "Orbo PowerCube" on display behind the bar of a pub in Dublin. The PowerCube was a small box which the pub website claimed contained a "perpetual motion motor" which required no external power source. The cube was shown charging a mobile phone. Steorn claimed to be performing some "basic field trials" in undisclosed locations

In June 2016, the company informed shareholders that it had failed to meet expectations, that company founder Shaun (Seán) McCarthy was being replaced as CEO, and that operating costs were nearly €1 million per year. After investments totaling nearly €23 million over a ten-year period, in November 2016 the company shut down and laid off its staff, due to a lack of additional funding to continue operations.

mariaalice

na1 wrote: »

Steorn -the Irish "Free Energy" company:

If all of that is true its got to be one of the most amazing stories ever could be a film a company raised 23 million with the promise of developing a free energy system thus denying the laws of basic physics!!

Any links to the research they were doing.

na1

mariaalice wrote: »

na1 wrote: »

Steorn -the Irish "Free Energy" company:

If all of that is true its got to be one of the most amazing stories ever could be a film a company raised 23 million with the promise of developing a free energy system thus denying the laws of basic physics!!

Any links to the research they were doing.

Obviously they didn't reveal any specific information (claiming that was a trade secret)

On 1 April 2010 Steorn opened an online development community, called the Steorn Knowledge Development Base (SKDB), which they said would explain their technology. Access was available only under licence on payment of a fee

There is an article on the Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steorn

mariaalice

On the other hand if anyone was stupid enough to invest in a free energy systme maybe they deserve to lose their money.

na1

mariaalice wrote: »

On the other hand if anyone was stupid enough to invest in a free energy systme maybe they deserve to lose their money.

Are you saying that our government is stupid??

[font=Lato, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]Steorn is owed €296,915 by the Irish government in tax credits intended to stimulate innovative Irish research.


[/font]http://dispatchesfromthefuture.com/2017/03/liquidator-announced-statement-of-affairs/

RoboRat

I have had 2 people work for me who seemed were up to scratch and talked the talk, after 3 weeks, it was clear that they couldn't walk the walk.

First guy, I told him he had to be up to the level by the time his probation ended. He never once stayed back or worked towards improving himself. He was let go when his probation ended. Next guy lasted 4 weeks and was let go.

Its easy to talk yourself up but you need to be able to back it up at the end of the day. It's also key that you do your background checks and the higher up you go, the more detailed these checks are.

diomed

I was given a finance assistant who had been interviewed by HR.
After 15 minutes I knew he knew nothing. I probably knew after a minute.
He told me his previous work was washing dishes in a hotel kitchen.
He was intelligent so I told him he could learn.
If I blew his cover I would be doing all the heavy lifting myself.

He was a good worker and learned plenty.
He asked questions until he understood, which is something I liked.
There is nothing worse than people pretending they understand. Ask again, and again, and again.

Now he is in finance at a high level in a major USA city.
He got a degree after he worked in our company.
When he was with me he told me his brother was employed in a major financial institution in south Dublin on the strength of an imaginary degree.

mariaalice

Probably depends on the job, one of mine works in an Anti money laundering/anti fraud job and the background check were unreal including checking on family.

Sleepy

We once had a guy hired for a contractor role who allegedly had 3 years experience as a DBA.

Within the first few hours we had to pull him into a side office for a quiet chat. Turns out his "reference" in a well-known software company was his flatmate and his 3 years experience was as a florist!

BrokenArrows

Used to work with a guy who had plenty of side business.
Anyway before i knew him well enough to know better he came to me with a business opportunity.

Anyway long story short I made 3 x my money back but not before a few threats were sent his way.

I found out a few years later after we hadnt worked together for a while that he had scammed a good bit of money out of other colleagues and they didnt get their money back.

He would lie about everything. He would tell you black was white.
You could tell him to his face that you knew he was lying but he would just go totally red and attempt to stick to his statement.
He even got fired and everyone knew he was fired but he continued to tell me that it wasnt true and he left on his own. The boss apparently even offered him a huge pay rise and promotion if he stayed.

During the course of me knowing him his wife left him, he was banned from seeing his child, his new fiance left him a few days before the wedding. Another fiance kept postponing the wedding. They eventually got married but almost immediately he left the country for some reason and i havent heard anything about him since.

jmayo

donegaLroad wrote: »

Yes, it looks good for an institution to have someone on the staff who is currently working on their phd, whether they finish it or not is another story, but it gets the foot in the door to a higher level job in education. She knew what she was doing!

What about Mike Oldfield, of Tubular Bells fame. He once took a Bach prelude and played it backwards on the piano. It became the theme tune to the film 'The Exorcist' and Tubular Bells went on to sell 20 million copies. He admitted to this one night on Jules Holland

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp069jEQag8

I don't think it is fair to include Oldfield in this discussion.

The guy has proven over decades his musicianship, his writing and composing ability.
He if anything never took the easy option as can be evidenced from his long running fight with Branson over recording contracts.

Also would you care to remind us again how many seconds of the 49 minute album is that ?

AFAIK he had already reached number 1 in Britain and most of Europe before the director of The Exorcist heard the album when he was visiting Atlantic records in US who were distributing the album there.
The release of the The Exorcist helped US sales but he was already selling in Europe.

Oh and while you are at it, would you mind telling us what parts of Hergest Ridge and Ommadawn his following two albums that also went to number 1 were also lifted ?

Deise Vu

A friend of mine was a Chartered Accountant who had a high flying, very public, job with a PLC. He once told me he had failed Honours maths in the Leaving and should not have been accepted as a Chartered Accountancy student. The rest of his results were excellent apparently and he would have pissed up pass maths but made the mistake of going for the higher points (which he didn't need). It should have postponed his studies for a year as he repeated the Leaving but he was accepted with a nod and a wink into one of the so-called Big 4 firms and the rest is history. I have no issue with him but I am amazed at the firm agreeing to a lie that could so easily have been proved.

I knew another guy who emigrated to Oz and came back with his tail between his legs after six months. He lied about his experience here and was found out sharpish.

The moral I suppose is to make sure you can back up what you say.

RoboRat

I was given a finance assistant who had been interviewed by HR.
After 15 minutes I knew he knew nothing. I probably knew after a minute.
He told me his previous work was washing dishes in a hotel kitchen.

And this is the reason I sit in on staff recruitment interviews at the second stage and also ask them to do a project. If someone lies about their academic qualifications, I have no problem as long as they can do the work to a high level; that's all I am looking for. Getting first class honours doesn't necessarily equate to a good worker.

Chrongen

pemay wrote: »

Its usually the kind of thing you hear way, way after the fact.

AN example of that would be a test I did in college. Very difficult one too, good few people failed. Met a bloke a few years later and the subject came up, turned out he had gotten his hands on the test the day before. Aced the thing.

And when I think of that kind of thing, but on a much larger scale of life...it makes your mind boggle. Like your millionaire father telling you on his deathbed "son, I cheated my way into my wealth!"

All after the fact.

Other cases, like jobs, was seeing the train-wreck in motion. Seeing social media and linked-in profiles where degrees suddenly materialise out of nowhere, 5 years experience becomes 10 etc. Then they conveniently disappear after landing the position. Few years later the profiles appear again, now nicely buffed up (and backed up too)!

And lots more besides!

You monitor people's LinkedIn profiles over the course of a few years?

pemay

Chrongen wrote: »

You monitor people's LinkedIn profiles over the course of a few years?

Yes, I sat with my face 2 inches from the screen for many years, only taking a break now and then to shout at cats outside.

Or

Its hardly "monitoring" to notice people you know pop up on social media, or someone else you know points it out.

Why, are you worried that its so easy to see peoples lies on social media? Sweating? :P

Mister Vain

I know a couple of women who pretended to be pregnant in work. My brother in law got a great job in a company despite having none of the qualifications or experience he said he had. He's the manager now. I've seen some "professional" photographers who can barely operate their cameras.

pemay

Mister Vain wrote: »

I know a couple of women who pretended to be pregnant in work. My brother in law got a great job in a company despite having none of the qualifications or experience he said he had. He's the manager now. I've seen some "professional" photographers who can barely operate their cameras.

Following up on that pregnancy lie cant be too easy.

job seeker

pemay wrote: »

Following up on that pregnancy lie cant be too easy.

Football under her jumper kinda job?

Mister Vain

pemay wrote: »

Following up on that pregnancy lie cant be too easy.

One of them was years ago. She was a big girl to begin with. She kept it up for a while and then she left. The other one was very recent. She didn't want to do any lifting so she said she was pregnant. They asked her to get a cert from the doctor and then she had the neck to say she lost the baby the night before and yet she was in work the following day without a bother on her.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

fergus1001

I once knew this guy in New York who was working at one of the big law firms he blagged his way in claiming he had a degree from Harvard law but he really didn't, think he got busted in the end but got out on some bull**** deal

donegaLroad

jmayo wrote: »

I don't think it is fair to include Oldfield in this discussion.

The guy has proven over decades his musicianship, his writing and composing ability.
He if anything never took the easy option as can be evidenced from his long running fight with Branson over recording contracts.

Also would you care to remind us again how many seconds of the 49 minute album is that ?

AFAIK he had already reached number 1 in Britain and most of Europe before the director of The Exorcist heard the album when he was visiting Atlantic records in US who were distributing the album there.
The release of the The Exorcist helped US sales but he was already selling in Europe.

Oh and while you are at it, would you mind telling us what parts of Hergest Ridge and Ommadawn his following two albums that also went to number 1 were also lifted ?

I see your point

TallGlass

Mister Vain wrote: »

I've seen some "professional" photographers who can barely operate their cameras.

I have also seen a few 'IT workers', who could barely turn on a computer let alone operate it!

TallGlass

Suppose, you could say the likes of Lance Armstrong was lying on his CV also..

Basically, if your interviewing someone, you don't know them, your literally trusting a person you don't know to tell you the truth. I think your lying to yourself if you think that's the case.

I'd say. If you took the CVs of 100 people that had leaving cert results on them, my guess is about 90/100 would have some 'typo', like an accidental 'Higher Level' pasted into another subject field by mistake of course.

Its all well and good if people lie get in and ok, do a good job, but it can be fairly sketchy to have someone in a position of power without a breeze about what's going on and worse than that is start to make people's lives hell by creating problems that don't exist or by them not been capable of doing their jobs correctly!

You'd be found out pretty easy in a technical role.

Non technical, you could definitely get away with it easier.

sbsquarepants

Deise Vu wrote: »

I knew another guy who emigrated to Oz and came back with his tail between his legs after six months. He lied about his experience here and was found out sharpish.

A guy I know worked for a couple of years in Oz checking and approving drawings of steel roofing structures, despite having no technical training of any sort. He is normally not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I have to admit he had a fairly ingeniously simple theory - the guys drawing it up most likely knew what they were doing, every now and again he'd tell them it was wrong and had to be made stronger, and you can't go too far wrong, use 10mm instead of 8mm steel, or use M16 instead of M14 bolts and so on. It might cost a few quid more but you aren't going to kill anyone!
He never got rumbled and eventually moved on of his own accord.

FTA69

I lied in my job application that I had a full, clean driving license. I'd never driven in my life, in fact on Saturday I came dead last at Go Karting (behind a load of kids even) cos I'm so sh*t behind the wheel.

I knew that we'd be nearly 9 months into a year's training period before we were given cars so hoped to make a good impression. A month before our probation ended our manager came out of his office with a big smile and tossed me a set of keys to a Toyota Auris asking me to hop in and collect something from the other office and congrats on my new company car. When I told him I actually couldn't drive he went apesh*t but they'd spent tens of thousands training me and I was one of the best people they had so they kept me on. Out of 120 people nationally with my job I'm the only one who can't drive.

I'm glad I bullsh*tted on my application, got my dream job and am happy as a ham. He who dares and all that.

lawred2

TallGlass wrote: »

I have also seen a few 'IT workers', who could barely turn on a computer let alone operate it!

hmmmm

El Tarangu

pemay wrote: »

Read through the thread on the woman who was scamming the social welfare system, got me thinking about the various cheats I know/have come across.

Just a couple off the top of my head...

... Another few people I know just pretended they had years of experience (job required 10 years senior experience, they had NONE!) All worked out grand.

There is a big, big difference between using false documentation to scam money off taxpayers over the course of many years, and talking up your previous work experience to make it seem more relevant for the position that you are going for.

jmayo

I remember being told of a guy studying civil engineering in college who trotted off to London to do site work for the summer after his first year in college.
He claimed he was nearly graduated and end up in charge of foundations on some site.
Long story short was that he screwed up reading the plans showing the underground sewers and water mains resulting in someone hitting them flooding the site with all sorts.

The worst time in IT was round turn of the century when the telecoms/1999/dot com bubble was in full swing as anyone and everyone with supposed IT qualifications and experience were given jobs.

Working on one client web setup in a data center I asked their guy if he has a spare network cable as I had used mine.
I needed to patch another laptop into one of their switches to configure one of their firewalls and next thing I know he pulled the cable from a solaris box that was running the bloody website.
Thankfully i didn't ask him for a power cable.

The same fooker was very quick to throw other people under the bus as he did with a colleague of mine when a firewall crashed due to a bug we hadn't known about.

It should be easier to weed out bluffers in tech jobs, but they still get through and it is often only when they are faced with real life problems that they are found out.

leggo

I don’t see any issue with lying on your CV. I mean, I wouldn’t, because I’m doing what I want to do and it’s in self-employment, then I work a job I’m over-qualified for if anything to pay the bills on top, but it’s not illegal to lie on a CV. If it’s even immoral is up for debate IMO. It’s the employers duty to check and if they don’t and you get away with it, good luck to you. Your expectations will ultimately be capped, I mean if you go for a promotion in a field you’re not qualified in then you’re likely going to get found out eventually. So if you lie to get a decent IT job, say, you’ll probably never invent the next Facebook, whereas someone who grafted may because they have that core foundation of knowledge.

But even then if someone unqualified did invent the next Facebook before someone qualified, the qualified person couldn’t really moan because all that’s happened there is that the former maximised their potential and the latter didn’t. A qualification is just a piece of paper at the end of the day, regardless of how hard you worked for it or how proud you are of it. It’s up to you to make it mean something through continuing that hard work. And if you don’t, someone who didn’t put that hard work in to begin with can skip you in the queue. That’s life.

jmayo

leggo wrote: »

I don’t see any issue with lying on your CV. I mean, I wouldn’t, because I’m doing what I want to do and it’s in self-employment, then I work a job I’m over-qualified for if anything to pay the bills on top, but it’s not illegal to lie on a CV. If it’s even immoral is up for debate IMO. It’s the employers duty to check and if they don’t and you get away with it, good luck to you. Your expectations will ultimately be capped, I mean if you go for a promotion in a field you’re not qualified in then you’re likely going to get found out eventually. So if you lie to get a decent IT job, say, you’ll probably never invent the next Facebook, whereas someone who grafted may because they have that core foundation of knowledge.

But even then if someone unqualified did invent the next Facebook before someone qualified, the qualified person couldn’t really moan because all that’s happened there is that the former maximised their potential and the latter didn’t. A qualification is just a piece of paper at the end of the day, regardless of how hard you worked for it or how proud you are of it. It’s up to you to make it mean something through continuing that hard work. And if you don’t, someone who didn’t put that hard work in to begin with can skip you in the queue. That’s life.

BTW you sound distinctly like someone that embelished their CV at one stage or another.

The big problem I have with it is that you may end up in a team with the liar and when they fook up or when they can't even do the job other people have to carry them.
Also if they fook up it can have negative consequences for the team and for the business because clients more often than not take a bit of a dislike to companies that provide shoddy work.

Sadly management might refuse to see the problem because they might have to admit they screwed up when hiring the liar in the first place.
Also it is often the case said liar is the biggest ar**lick known to man and is so far up the managers ass that the manager thinks they are god's gift to creation.

And yes life isn't fair.