When I ran a personnel consultancy, a gentleman called one day. He had a very pronounced African accent, was pleasantly spoken and sounded educated and polite. I suspected one of my friends, who was a great joker, so I asked the man for his name and number. He gave me an '0471' number, Umtata, in what was then the 'independent' Transkei homeland, and an African name, Dominic Munyawire, a common Chichewa surname. I called back, the telephone was answered with the name of a well known travel agency chain, and I was put through to him. He had all the appropriate experience, courses and qualifications to set him up in a good job. I was delighted. As he went through his many years of experience he mentioned that he was from Malawi and had managed a travel agency there, even giving me the dates. The travel industry was a small world and a good friend of mine, Gary, had been general manager of that same company in Malawi during almost exactly the same period. After the conversation, I called Gary and asked him if he remembered the man.
"Definitely not," he replied without hesitation, "and there were only 22 people in the company and I knew them all by name."
Clutching at straws, I asked if he could have been an employee of one of the company's associates, and again got a negative response.
Intrigued, Gary and I got together later over a cup of tea and hatched a plan whereby I'd call the Malawian, tell him I had a client who was interested in him, and we would set up a telephone interview.
I made the call, telling him that my client was setting up a programme of tours to Malawi, and that he would be the ideal candidate. We arranged for a telephone interview to take place, Gary came to my office, and I made the call. Gary, pretending to be 'Mr. Murphy', the client, picked up the extension and introduced himself. Our man repeated the same information as before, accurate to the last detail. 'Mr. Murphy' asked him to reconfirm the details of his employment in Malawi, expressed his interest in employing him, and said he was going to transfer the call to the director of the company. We then clicked the phone a couple of times and Gary introduced himself, this time under his real name :
"My name is Gary Johnson. Does my name mean anything to you?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, it should, because I was General Manager of the company that you claim to have worked for in Malawi during the exact times that you say you worked there. In other words, I would have been your boss, but we have never heard of each other."
He launched into a lengthy explanation of how his father died and he had to return to the homeland. Gary cut him short and said that he suspected that the whole story was a well orchestrated pack of lies. Gary had wanted to make the man come all the way to Cape Town to be exposed as a liar face to face. Even I felt this was a little unfair, or perhaps I was more concerned about the effects on my office environment as his lies were exposed.
"Ah, well, then I think we have nothing more to discuss. I am sorry we wasted each others' time."
It was a dignified and humble retreat in the face of a defeat which had come about through a million to one chance. I felt a pang of sympathy for this man whom fate had denied the chance of a job, whereas so many others, less qualified and less accomplished liars, had not been caught out and were working in positions for which they were totally incompetent, mostly in government and for SAA.