What made me excise all PHP work from my resume (except for PHP security work, which honestly is like shooting fish in a barrel) was when a company looking for "PHP experts" asked "how much of your last job was PHP?" and "about half" was considered too little. Because using Ruby makes your PHP knowledge rot or something.

So I'd tell him to lie to get that PHP job. It sucks for lots of reasons, but so many employers in the PHP space all have their heads up their garbage collectors.