The Opposite Kinds of Workplace Mendacity

How to navigate social absurdities while retaining your integrity

AI-generated image by QuinnBrak from Pixabay

At its core, mendaciousness speaks to a world where deception is woven into the essence of social and professional interactions. Disingenuousness can seem intuitively negative, yet in certain contexts, mendacity is acceptable and essential for survival, growth, and camaraderie.

The two expressions of mendacity— one that joyfully embraces the farce of life and one that grimly takes it too seriously — reflect contrasting modes of engagement with absurd systems. These modes, while both underpinned by deception, reveal different attitudes toward the fictions we live by and the mechanisms we employ to navigate them.

Honest Mendaciousness: Joy in the Farce

In many contemporary workplaces, particularly those where outcomes are abstract, disconnected from tangible products or discernible societal contributions, an unspoken acknowledgment of absurdity exists.

Corporate jargon, endless meetings, and ambiguous job roles often seem to orbit around nothingness — an empty center of bureaucratic theater. Within these contexts, we encounter what can be termed honest mendaciousness. This form of mendacity arises not from a desire to manipulate or betray…