Tangent alert: I failed a polygraph once, with humorous results.
While I was attending college after the army I wanted to get a job as a "night watchman," figuring that I could earn a small salary, but have a lot of time to do school work while on the job. (That worked out great).
Security guard jobs were very easy to get in those days, so I chose the one that was paying a little bit over MW and applied. Being a Veteran, it was just a matter of a few formalities for me to be on the payroll, so...
One of the formalities was a lie detector test. It was explained to me that the questions would be structured so that all answers were to be "No," and I just had to truthfully answer the questions to go forward with the job. The questions would include, for example, "Have you ever stolen from your employer," "Have you ever missed work due to drunkenness," and so on. They gave me a little while alone in a room to ponder the questions while they got ready, then they set me up with the electrodes and whatnot and asked me the questions.
While I was mentally preparing for the test a few things began popping into my mind. For example, I had used Army paper and envelopes to write and send letters home for three years; is that "stealing"? Well, yeah. Once, after a rare night of binge drinking at Fort Lee, VA, I had called off sick the following morning. Was that "missing work due to drunkenness"? Well, yeah.
Anyway the Dude came in and asked me the questions and I answered all of them, "No," as required. The technician, of course showed no reaction to my answers, and I was hired.
At the time, I had a major issue with my Wisdom Teeth. All of them required extraction, and it would cost a lot of money, but I had no health insurance. So my plan was to work this Security job until the health insurance kicked in, then get the oral surgery...which is exactly what happened. But there were complications with the surgery (EKG was "funny") and I had to stay in the hospital for a few days. On day #2, I called the office and told them that I could not work because I was in the hospital - the doctors thought I had had a heart attack.
My employer, unknown to me, immediately FIRED ME for not coming to work, and sent a Rep to my house to get my "service revolver" from my dad. A weird thing all around. I didn't really care about the job - I got another one forthwith - but the point is, they had assumed that since I was a pathological liar, I was lying about being in the hospital, so they need to get rid of me. Their view on my veracity was because of the FAILED lie detector test!
