NBC has backed off on a promo it ran just once — one that described “Friends” as the “best comedy ever.” That might rank as the funniest joke of this television season.

Nothing against “Friends” — it has been a good show for 10 years — but one of the surest ways to wipe out your credibility is to overhype your credentials. Most people wouldn’t even describe “Friends” as the best Thursday night NBC comedy over the last 20 years, not with “Seinfeld” and “Cheers” and “Frasier” and “The Cosby Show” around. (“Frasier,” for example, has won the best comedy Emmy five times; “Friends” has won it once.)

But that type of hype certainly isn’t uncommon in television. It’s not unusual in workplaces, either.

We’ve all heard horror stories about people who lied on their resumes and got caught, but maybe a bigger problem can be if you lie to yourself about just how good you are.

There is a great line in “Ball Four,” Jim Bouton’s classic baseball book. They’re talking about old-timers games, and how past accomplishments are exaggerated: “The older they get, the better they were when they were younger.”

Workers trip themselves up by doing that in job interviews, exaggerating their roles in team accomplishments. Certainly sometimes the workers are lying, but other times they’re fooling themselves as much as anyone else. They look back and focus only on themselves, ignoring the talent around them. And the talent that they do have is eclipsed because they come across as phony and self-absorbed.

They’re like the people who hyped “Friends” (generally not the cast members and crew, who have been humble about their accomplishments). They have every reason to celebrate a wonderful accomplishment; but in the process, they need to keep it in perspective.