Man lies about his astrological sign at work for MONTHS; his plan completely backfires. AITA? UPDATED

When this man tells all of his coworkers that he's a Leo when he's really a Libra, he asks the internet:

"I lied about my star sign at work to prove a point. AITA?"

I think astrology is one of the dumbest, most unscientific things you could possibly believe in. Honestly, I would judge someone less for believing that the earth is flat or being a scientologist.

At least Scientology has an established lore of writing created by a limited number of people, whereas apparently anyone can write horoscopes for any small-town newspaper and people will still follow their local little blurb's advice.

Anyway, there's a group of co-workers at my job who are way into astrology. They're always talking about signs and compatibility ("it didn't work out because he's a Gemini" etc). Sometimes they talk about people at work and their personality traits based on their signs.

When they asked me, I told them a fake birthday without even knowing the sign associated with it. It turns out, that, based on this information, I'm a Leo.

They practically fell all over themselves telling me how much sense that made. "You have such a creative spirit!" or "you're so generous!" or (my favorite) "You're so VITAL" (wtf).

We're all pretty friendly with each other so I thought it would be kind of funny to do this and then reveal to them later that I'm not a Leo at all to see how they reacted and covered for themselves to justify their ongoing belief in magic star influences.

Well, unfortunately, one of my bosses seems to believe that me being a Leo makes me uniquely suited to work on various projects and I've actually landed on some good opportunities because of it.

After a presentation to clients, I was recently told that my Leo spirit was really carrying the team through such a difficult deadline.

Now I'm genuinely worried that someone is going to figure out my real birthday (I work for a big company that has my real birthday in the system and there's a chance that some weird auto-generated public email or post somewhere will congratulate the October birthdays or something).

I am basically caught up in a lie that's based on nonsense to begin with and I'm really confused about what to do. I will probably never tell anyone at work this information, so I figured I'd tell a bunch of strangers on the Internet in the hopes that I don't get found out and have some kind of weird disciplinary action taken.

Imagine my boss firing me for pretending to be a Leo? That's SUCH a Pisces thing to do. KIDDING. (help)

EDIT: I am absolutely loving people saying "That's such a libra thing to do" or "it's just like a libra to get into situations like this." I said I was born in October but didn't specify the date. I'm not a libra either.

EDIT 2: People who are defending astrology by telling me that it's much more complicated than just your birthdate, and then proceeding to explain detailed nonsense about the movement of the celestial bodies--that is not the convincing argument you think it is

EDIT 3: Kidding. I'm a Libra. So all those people saying "That's so scorpio"--you're the ones who are wrong. Or is that what a scorpio would say to throw you off the trail? Who knows?

According to google, libras gravitate towards intellectualism, so maybe this is all an elaborate thought experiment. That's so Libra of me. Or is pretending I'm a Libra the Scorpio move?

gramps writes:

You're a Scorpio right? KIDDING! (Because I actually am a Leo, I really do think I am funny! Still joking. Not about when my birthday is but I really don't believe in this stuff.)

Sorry, this is a little funny. So two things you can do here. You can wrap a lie within a lie. (Don't judge me, anyone who tells you to be 100% honest is trying to sell you something.) If your real birthday comes out.

Then you simply take a big breath and say something really terrible happened on you it birthday when you were younger and so you adopted July 20th(whatever) as your birthday. No, you don't like to talk about the terrible thing. (Extra points if you can work up some teary eyes at the mention of this awful thing.)

This will do two things. Most of the things that they are talking about astrology wise will not be talked about to your face. Not wanting to talk about your real birthday, they will drop most of this around you. Your birthday literally becomes off limits. Sell the shit out of this and you won't have to ever worry about astrology again.

Second. Tell them you mixed your birthday up with your anniversary, (dog's birthday, anniversary of adopting your pet fish Melvin, whatever), and have been too embarrassed to tell anyone. Selling the embarrassment won't be hard. Unfortunately you will immediately start hearing about how that is completely like your "sign" and this bullshit starts all over.

Being honest will embarrass people and I really wouldn't recommend it here. Edit - Guess I need to say this. I don't think he should just "come clean" because what he was doing was a bit cruel. I think OP realizes what kind of hole this behavior can dig and I didn't want to pile on.

Oftentimes we tell others to be honest because we like the idea of honesty while in actual practice it can be highly selfish. You are soothing your conscience at the cost of someone else's feelings.

A good doctor never tells a loved one their family member suffered. A good wedding planner will love the color puce if it is the bride's favorite color of all time.

This world is cruel enough without helping to amplify that cruelty.

okpercepppt writes:

It's unfortunate, but usually you have to mirror your bosses idiocy for them to consider you worthy of promotion.

Bossman goes to church every sunday? You sure as shit aren't going anywhere or even getting raises if he doesn't believe you're a devout Christian. Boss is a diehard Republican and you aren't? Same thing.

You have to mirror the idiots of this world, particularly if you're dependent on their generosity for your life. Humans are still very tribal and if they see you as a member of a different tribe, you not only *AREN'T* going anywhere, you'll likely be the guy he blames any mistakes on.

You can be the absolute hardest worker and do the work of 3 departments (that actually takes 12 people to do on paper), but you'll be seen as dead last in the corporate pecking order if people consider you too strange to like. Humankind has *zero* empathy for those seen as very strange in most cases.

Your job is not the time to show your brilliantly unique plumage or to express unpopular views.

tl;dr Your job is not a good place for you to try to pull a "gotcha" to prove that their viewpoints are stupid. You pull that shit and you'll very quickly find yourself sliding to the bottom of the pecking order.

grim7 writes:

I see the humour in what you're saying, but equating astrology to people reading the horoscopes in your local paper is a bit naive and generalises something far more vast which kind of makes...

you sound a bit silly given you are seemingly going out of your way to mock people's interests without taking 2 seconds to google and find out a little bit more. I'm not saying your colleagues are into advanced astrology, but don't generalise.

It's ok to not like things other people like and just ignore it. For example, I don't like football (soccer) but it's a huge culture in the country I live in.

I don't go out of my way to lie about liking it just to feel somehow empowered by my ability to deceive lol... I'm not however mad that you are using the deceit to gain advantages at work - in my book that's ok.

It's the mocking that I find very immature and kind of rubs me the wrong way... Although astrology is not a religion, it kind of feels the same as if someone went out of their way to lie about being a particular religion just to say "LOOK AT THEM BELIEVING ME AND THEIR MADE UP GOD".

All that being said, it does sound like your boss is taking it a bit too far, as many people do with their interests.

Be respectful and maybe then you wouldn't seem like the biggest a-hole in this story when it should really be your boss. Happy Friday.

And now, OP's update:

Well, thanks to everyone for offering so much sound advice and all the sympathy in the comments. There were a lot of people adamantly defending astrology too, but thankfully the sensible, reasonable people were active enough to provide me with some pretty good ideas for how to handle this.

Sorry, long post incoming, but a lot has happened: It's been about a month and things are just getting weirder unfortunately, but I tried to do the right thing.

A couple weeks ago, after I worked up the courage, I sat down with the original co-workers that I gave the wrong birthday to. (Without my boss, who is the real issue right now).

I basically told them, "hey, something really awkward is going on with [our boss], and it kind of started because of a lie I told you guys a couple months ago."

Of course, when you admit openly to lying, people get interested, and the people at my job are really drama-hungry, so of course they immediately needed to know everything.

Paraphrasing here, but I told them, "so remember when we were all talking about birthdays and signs? I kind of told you guys the wrong birthday because I'm really uncomfortable with my sign--I don't think it fits me at all."

This was a good thing to say, apparently, because they immediately laughed so much and when I told them my actual sign they said, "that's such a [your actual sign] thing to do!" (Thanks to some helpful redditors who pointed out that the astrology-minded can do mental gymnastics to make anything work.)

I told them that I always felt like a Leo and I really liked a lot of the qualities that I had read about them so I gave a fake birthday so people would like me more, which they seemed to really understand.

They were really nice about it and I felt really guilty that I was basically lying to cover the lie. but I'm already in too deep. So I told them, hey, this is really awkward for me because our boss is giving me more opportunities because I'm a "Leo".

At this point, one of them says basically, "hey, you know what, maybe Leo is your rising sign!" (Again, EXACTLY what some people in the comments predicted) and offered to do my chart for me. Feeling super guilty about lying to these nice people and (I guess?) trying to connect with them rather than mock them, I said, okay sure.

We work remote a lot of days, but we actually made plans to meet back up at the office and then stay after we finished work so they could do the reading (is it a reading? I literally don't know).

It was super dumb, but I enjoyed it. We went into a conference room and we mapped out the whole chart. I had NO fg idea what was going on. But I appreciated the attention.

Towards the end of the session (or whatever you call it)—and mind you, this is like 8pm by now and at my job that means fg NO ONE is in the building, especially with a lot of people still working remote—who walks past the conference room but my fg boss.

The one who has been fawning over my performance since thinking I was a Leo. I guess she had come in to pick up some stuff or had stayed late herself. Who knows.

She comes in and sees the charts and my notes I had taken about my birth time and shit and, since she's really into astrology, gets all excited and goes, "oh, what's going on in here?"

And my co-worker was a fg G, just saving my ass, explaining that I had lied about my birthday, that I wasn't a Leo, but that I always felt like one...

but doing it way better than I ever could, essentially gaining so much sympathy for me and making me seem like this tortured, misunderstood person who felt like I was trapped in the wrong star sign. It was awesome and the vibes were good.

So my boss and my co-worker are going over my chart and it turns out that I'm not a Leo rising, but I am a Gemini rising and that got them talking about how that was SO me because I'm really social at work and I'm a multitasker and talkative. And they basically forgot that a couple months ago I was SO a Leo.

When I could sense the vibe was good, I even made a joke like, hey, I know that you needed a Leo helping out on those projects but I hope there's room for a Gemini ha ha. She ate it up and was like, hey, I think a Gemini is compatible with the team we have now, you obviously have already fit right in, blah blah blah.

So the work thing is no longer a concern, but here's where it gets kind of bad again. My boss asks to take the astrological chart home, which I didn't really think anything of I guess, because I certainly don't care about it or want it. Then...things got weird.

And then a few days go by and then it's the weekend. And then I log onto a zoom meeting on monday and she asks me to stay on after everyone has hung up. She goes "pessimist-sauce, I'm sorry if this is overstepping but I know you're recently single.

My daughter is close to your age, she's just finished college, and according to your charts, you would be so compatible. So I would love it if you would ask her out sometime." She kept saying "no pressure!"

but if you know this woman, she obviously was pressuring me and she's clearly too invested in her employees' personal lives. Honestly I was so dumbfounded when she brought it up that I was basically speechless.

So that was about a week ago and since then, she's had her daughter follow and DM me on Instagram AND email me and start basically flirting with me. It's all pretty casual conversation, but she's clearly prepped her with things like "you would be perfect for him".

I've kind of stalled getting back to her because I honestly think this is really inappropriate and the last thing I want is to become more involved in my boss' life and certainly not with someone she's related to. This all feels pretty inappropriate, but I also feel worried about hurting feelings.

Sooooo, yeah. This is awkward. And I would argue it's perhaps worse than when we started. Help.