social

When people are wanting to get out of various situations and withhold from telling the truth so as not to ruffle feathers, they fabricate wild stories.

Because this tends to happen most of the time–whether it's an employee wanting extra time off or a date who is too afraid to say they're "not interested"–we've become conditioned to be skeptical when hearing excuses.

So it's surprising then that the one time we rejected a person's excuse to decline participation, it turned out to be true.

How embarrassing.