On the evening of January 31, 2016, the manager of the Morro Bay Burger King received an urgent phone call from a person stating he was from the Morro Bay, California, fire department. Sounding alarmed and with a commanding tone, the man explained that a dangerous methane gas leak had occurred and was filling the Burger King with lethal levels of this toxic gas and that immediate action was required. He ordered the manager to break out all the windows in the restaurant to ventilate the deadly fumes. Panicked, the manager instantly ordered his employees to break out the windows. But the windows were difficult to break, so the manager heroically drove his care through the plate-glass window, and the employees eventually succeeded in breaking the rest of the windows and saving the building from a devastating explosion.
Relieved, the manager called the fire department to proudly report his success and received disturbing news - no one from the fire department had made any such phone call! It was nothing more than a prank call by someone pretending to be a city official. The manager and his employees had inflicted over $35,000 o damage to his business - all because of a lie.
Timothy R. Jennings MD, "The God-Shaped Heart," page 37, Baker Books
