employer made us take fake lie detector tests to trap a stealing receptionist

by Alison Green on September 3, 2024

A reader writes:

A coworker, Kate, and I used to work together at another company several years ago. I was visiting with her recently, when she brought up a situation we encountered at the old place.

At the old firm, I was a manager and Kate reported to another manager. A bunch of cash payments were missing for a couple of months, so an internal investigation was done and it was discovered that the payments were being pocketed by the front desk receptionist. This amounted to several thousand dollars.

The managers were all called together and told about the theft. One of the company owners was an attorney (this is important) and decided to have his son, a former police detective, give every employee (20 employees and four managers) a lie detector test in the hopes the receptionist would fess up. They said they’d have to give the managers the test to make it look like no one was assumed innocent, but they weren’t accusing any of us. In the meantime, the receptionist was still working for us and cash continued to go missing. I couldn’t figure out why we weren’t just letting her go.

The lie detector sessions were conducted about a month later, but as a manager, I wasn’t hooked up to the machine for my test.

Kate told me today that her test was very different. She said her manager pulled her team together and told them money had been missing and the company had decided to do lie detector tests to find out who did it. Her test was given late on a Friday afternoon. She said she was so nervous, she threw up before her appointed time, cried all the way home afterwards, and spent the weekend sure she was going to lose her job, or worse … for something she didn’t do. I feel so bad for her and all the other employees who had to participate. I honestly can’t remember what I told my department. Thinking about it makes me sick.

The following Monday, the receptionist was fired. We managers were told she passed the lie detector test, but they fired her anyway. I was baffled by how the whole thing was handled, but trusted they knew what they were doing. I should also mention the receptionist was a person of color, while the rest of the office was white.

Was this even legal? I figured since one owner was an attorney, he’d surely follow the law. Now, I wonder if the owners were thinking they’d be sued for discrimination for firing the receptionist. What are your thoughts?

It wasn’t legal! It was also very weird.

Under the federal Employee Polygraph Protection Act, it’s illegal for nearly all private employers to require employees to take lie detector tests. (The law excludes government employees, federal contractors, security services, and some pharmaceutical positions.)

Employers are allowed use lie detector tests if an employee is a primary suspect in a workplace crime — but that would have meant just the receptionist, not every employee, and the test would have needed to be administered by a certified and bonded polygraph examiner with a valid license.

They also would have been required to provide any polygraphed employees with a notice before the test explaining the incident leading to the investigation, an explanation of the grounds for their suspicion of the person’s involvement in the incident, an explanation of the employee’s access to the property or loss under investigation, and an explanation of the employee’s rights, including their right to terminate the exam, their right to consult legal counsel before the exam, and their right to file a complaint with the Department of Labor.

And this is all before getting into the fact that lie detector tests aren’t especially reliable.

Beyond all that, the way your company went about this was fully bananapants.

They could have just … fired the receptionist.

If they wanted an actual investigation, they could have reported it to the police.

This charade involving 24 people was totally unnecessary.

For what it’s worth, while it’s understandable to assume that attorneys must know and be following the law in their own workplaces, law firms seem to flout employment law pretty regularly. It’s quite odd.

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{ 269 comments }

{ 269 comments… read them below }

    1. Venus*

      I had an interesting conversation a couple weeks ago with a friend whose company uses them for security jobs that don’t require qualifications (i.e. anyone can apply) but where there is a worry that those people could take advantage of their position. The employer knows the tests are unreliable but people who are criminals are unlikely to want to be polygraphed so it reduces the number of bad applicants, and they use responses to questions as a guide for how much of a background check they should do on applicants (so if someone is anxious about any particular question then they do more background checks on that particular point or if there are too many red flags then they can give any reason not to hire them). I was surprised that they did them given the unreliability, but it’s for positions in countries with no real employment protections and better than nothing.

      1. ecnaseener*

        Nah, even that is flawed thinking. If you’re good at lying and it doesn’t bother you, and you know that “lie detectors” just detect whether you have a physiological response that suggests nervousness, then you’re not going to be afraid to take the test.

          1. Quill*

            Yeah, it’s going to weed out conscientious people as well as people with something that’s on their conscience, so… mostly you are selecting for good liars and people who would take advantage of their position thinking that it’s fully justified.

            1. Venus*

              There will definitely be the occasional competent liar, but if you’re hiring 100 people at random (this is an unstable country that doesn’t have regular employment so there are no reference checks, no contacting previous employers, no resumes) then either way some of them will be good liars even without the polygraph, and using the test will result in a group of employees who are less likely to be current criminals.

              I completely agree that polygraphs shouldn’t be used in most countries, and they are unreliable, but I was curious to find one situation in which they can be slightly beneficial. Thankfully AAM advice doesn’t really apply to Somalia, Haiti, or Sudan so my comment was more about my surprise that there are places that use them and not that they should ever be used in america!

                1. Edwina*

                  If I had other options for employment, and a prospective employer said I would have to take a polygraph test as part of the interview, I would cancel the interview. I think employers that do this will lose out on people with other options.

                2. The Wanderer*

                  If I had other options for employment, and a prospective employer said I would have to take a polygraph test as part of the interview, I would cancel the interview.

                  Not for a good position with a foreign employer in Somalia, Haiti, or Sudan, you wouldn’t.

                1. Grizabella the Glamour Cat*

                  Some of AAM’s advice might apply in a wide range of places, but when an answer is based on US law as this one is, it doesn’t really apply in ANY other country.

            2. Star Trek Nutcase*

              Agree. At 21, I was polygraphed for a part-time job at a national convenience store (decades ago). I had several bad reactions & questioned, but was still offered the job. My vivid imagination was too blame – I was very introverted, naively innocent, and just envisioning the consequences of committing a petty crime set me off. From day forward, I believed polygraphs should be illegal and have never agreed to one ever again. (OTOH My brother could easily pass one cause he always believed his lies & his “truths” despite all evidence to the contrary.)

              1. littlehope*

                Yeah, it would weed me out because I absolutely do not want to work for a company that thinks doing lie-detector tests on prospective employees is a sensible or reasonable thing to do. Which arguably is fine, I guess, at least it means we’d find out right at the start that I don’t want them as an employer and they probably don’t want me as an employee? Saves time, I guess.

                1. The Wanderer*

                  I absolutely do not want to work for a company that thinks doing lie-detector tests on prospective employees is a sensible or reasonable thing to do.

                  Even for clearance jobs?

              2. Irish Teacher.*

                I had a boss once who was a compulsive liar and I suspect she’d pass too because…she seemed to enjoy lying, wasn’t the least bit nervous about it and didn’t care if she was caught out. It was like a game to her and she’d just start laughing and say something like, “did you believe me?” if you caught her out in a lie.

                And I’m not sure she even fully realised she was lying. She definitely knew what she was saying hadn’t actually happened, but like I could see her claiming a qualification she didn’t have on the grounds that she WOULD have done it had she known it would be of use to her in getting the job, so in her mind, that would probably have counted as making it “almost true.”

        2. Arrietty*

          I have an intermittently elevated heart rate for medical reasons and am almost pathologically honest but would probably fail a polygraph.

      2. Caramel & Cheddar*

        I feel like they’re definitely making a lot of assumptions about why someone might not want to take a polygraph, some of which might make a lot of good candidates self-select out of applying somewhere that an employer does this. If it’s working for them, I guess that matters less, but this seems like a weird way to filter people out.

        1. NotAnotherManager!*

          Yep. I am honest to a fault, have only two decades-old speeding tickets on my record, and previously held TS/SCI clearance, and I’m not taking a polygraph for the vast majority of jobs. Maybe if I had to renew my TS/SCI for a program that required polygraphy, and even then I’d be annoyed by it.

          I’m also not being interrogated by the police without a lawyer or giving up my DNA without a court order, both of which are also use the same erroneous logic to presume guilt.

          1. Database Developer Dude*

            The CI poly isn’t bad. I’ve heard the Full Scope or Lifestyle is where they ask you questions about stuff that isn’t necessarily illegal, but is none of anyone’s business.

            1. H3llifIknow*

              The lifestyle and full scope are intended to weed out those who may be engaged in activities (back in way gone times, things like being homosexual) that could potentially open the person up to giving up secrets due to blackmail. Unfortunately, the Federal Govt is pretty slow to get with the times and honestly those types of questions are silly now, but many are still asked.

              1. Database Developer Dude*

                Thing is, you could be in a monogamous, heterosexual relationship and still be doing things you don’t want anyone knowing about.

                I like to say me and the wife could be swinging from the chandeliers every night or we could be sleeping in separate bedrooms, or anything in between, but you’ll never know…..BECAUSE I’M NOT GOING TO TALK ABOUT IT!!!!!!!

                1. WillowSunstar*

                  Or you could simply not be religious and not want people to know about that either, depending on which state you live in. Some people still have very prejudiced beliefs about that particular subject.

                2. H3llifIknow*

                  Oh I 100% agree; I was just pointing out what I was told the reasoning behind “those types of questions” was intended to be. It’s wrong, and it’s stupid, but… *shrug*.

              2. Insert Clever Name Here*

                When I was applying for my TS/SCI our security director told me “they don’t care what you did, just who you did it with.” Like you smoke marijuana with your sorority sisters vs you smoke marijuana when you go backpacking across Europe and met that cool Russian dude are two verrry different things from a security clearance perspective.

                1. NotAnotherManager!*

                  My favorite security clearance story was this incredibly strait-laced guy I worked with who went to one of the Ivies in the 80s, and the FBI refused to believe he’d never done cocaine and kept re-interviewing him to try to get it out of him. In the same group was a guy who sold drugs in the 70s and done nearly all of them – he did the whole recitation and was done in one interview.

                2. Anonymel*

                  Yes! Like when my son was getting his done to work with NASIC they basically said, we don’t necessarily screen for WHAT you did (within reason)-we DO screen for if you LIE about doing it, so saying “yeah I smoked pot a few times in college” no biggie. You’re truthful. “I have never smoked weed in my life!” when you did in the past is going to show Deception. (Assuming it worked, which we’ve established here is iffy at best).

        2. Tau*

          I’d categorically refuse to take one because I have a disability that I’d expect has a pretty high chance of leading to false positives (I stutter – yes, my physiological stress levels are going to be all over the map while I’m talking, no, it has nothing to do with whether I’m lying). I could try to negotiate an exemption, but tbh in a lot of situations it’d just be easier to self-select out.

        3. Rainy*

          I wouldn’t take a polygraph in anything but some kind of security clearance situation just because I know that they’re unreliable. It would essentially be a waste of my time and energy for, best case, no result (and if it goes poorly, in situations like that, going poorly can ruin your life even if you’re innocent). And in a situation like the thieving employee, I’d refuse categorically and publicly and encourage my coworkers to refuse as well. As with NotAnotherManager!, I would also insist on a lawyer if the cops wanted to talk to me and I wouldn’t allow anyone to search me or my possessions without a warrant. Not because I’m guilty of anything (that I know of anyway), but because we have these rights for a good reason and we should exercise them.

        4. Catherine*

          My stepdad used a polygraph on me as part of home discipline. The result is that I will never take one again without a court order and have self-selected away from jobs that would require me to do it.

      3. FrivYeti*

        As others have mentioned, this is a great way to select for skilled liars and to weed out talented people with anxiety. I sure as shit would immediately withdraw my application if I found out that a lie detector test was going to be part of it, because I *understand how they work*.

        1. Orv*

          I’d consider it a red flag. If a company is using a test that’s widely known to be useless, what other BS are they pushing? I’d assume anyplace giving polygraphs is a pretty toxic workplace.

            1. FrivYeti*

              Yes, but you know what’s pretty common in an unstable country: anxiety and distrust of people in power.

              Instability works both ways, and a lot of people in those countries are going to look at that and think “holy shit, this place is willing to put me through lie detector tests, what else will they do that I won’t have any way to fight back against because legal recourses are limited?”

              Meanwhile, it won’t do anything to people who are just brazenly confident.

              It’s a shit way to get employees in *any* country.

            2. Nebula*

              Your insistence that none of the quite reasonable issues people are bringing up apply because it’s an ‘unstable country’ sounds kinda racist imo. Like sure US employment law doesn’t apply, the working environment is different etc etc, but in any country there will still be conscientious people who would fail a polygraph teste because they’re anxious about it, and people who know how to game it who will appear ‘safe’ to that employer. It’s bs whichever way you look at it.

      4. Beveled Edge*

        That’s hilarious. I don’t lie in job applications but I would avoid a company that required a lie detector test because a) the fact that they’re known to be unreliable reflects poorly on the employer and b) I’d be concerned about my professional reputation if they misread something as a lie and went around trash talking me in the industry afterwards.

      5. Despachito*

        “people who are criminals are unlikely to want to be polygraphed”

        I don’t think this is a reliable guide. I am not a criminal but would refuse to be polygraphed for a job – I find it demeaning, intrusive and inappropriate.

    2. Sugarholic Teacher*

      My friend works at a treatment center for sex offenders and they use polygraphs all the time. I was surprised. She says they’re 80% accurate. But I bet that varies a lot based on how nervous the person is. OP’s poor receptionist was clearly in no state to take one.

      1. sparkle emoji*

        Yeah, they detect physical signs of stress, not lying. Those 2 things can be related but that’s not universal. Clearly the receptionist was plenty stressed while being truthful.

        1. Quill*

          Yeah, I’m pretty sure if you polygraphed me any time in high school or college you could have found “evidence” to accuse me of literally anything. Turns out anxiety disorders are extremely bad for getting anything academic done.

      2. ecnaseener*

        I wonder where she got the 80% figure (from the polygraph companies? or does her employer somehow verify accuracy?) but even if it’s an accurate figure — 80% is nowhere near good enough to be useful! Especially for something as high-stakes as your friend’s job, yeesh.

        1. MassMatt*

          80% is indeed optimistic, but even at that rate consider 20% of liars will pass, AND 20% of truth tellers will “fail”. Really this is not significantly better than horoscopes or phrenology, but it’s got a machine and the guy administering the test is in a lab coat so it seems scientific.

          2. Friendly Owl*

            The situation is even worse than this, because of what we call the base-rate (or, when we ignore it, the Base-Rate Fallacy): when the underlying rate of positives in the population is low (in the LW’s story, there was maybe 1 guilty out of 24) the number of false positives can totally swamp out true positives. Let’s take for a moment that the test is 80% accurate, just for illustrative purposes, and, to keep it simple, that this means a rate of false positives of 20% and a rate of false negatives of 20 %. To keep numbers simple, let’s say I have a pool of 100 people and five percent, i.e 5 people, are liars and the other 95 are honest as the day is long. Let’s look at how the numbers play out:
            5 liars, so 4 detected as liars, 1 (20% of 5) falsely labeled honest
            95 honest folk, so 76 detected as honest, and 19 (20 % of 95) falsely labeled liars.
            The test calls 23 people liars- and the vast majority of those are wrongly labeled so.
            Base Rate Fallacy can play out across many circumstances, even with much better false negative and false positive rates. For many tests, medical and other, the rate of positives in the population is low – most people don’t have the disease, most people didn’t commit this crime, etc. and so when the test comes back positive, it is still more likely to be a false positive than a true positive.

      3. Observer*

        She says they’re 80% accurate.

        Assuming that she’s correct, that’s a *very* high failure rate. Is it always false positives, false negative or both? And how do they protect against either set? With a rate that high, you really, really cannot take action base only on the results of that test.

        1. Irish Teacher.*

          I wonder how much higher it is than just observation. I mean, with a random guess you’d be right as to whether somebody was lying 50% of the time and considering that some people are very bad at lying or give information that contradicts other things they have said, I’m guessing that just plain educated guessing would be accurate at least 60% of the time.

          I mean, not that it matters, but I wonder if a test has been done comparing the results of a polygraph to an experienced detective’s “nose” for suspects who are lying.

          And yeah, either way, using something that is accurate only 80% of the time to decide things like who gets jobs, gets fired, is suspected of a crime is…problematic.

          1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

            “I mean, with a random guess you’d be right as to whether somebody was lying 50% of the time and considering that some people are very bad at lying or give information that contradicts other things they have said, I’m guessing that just plain educated guessing would be accurate at least 60% of the time.”
            This is just gem I want to ponder for the rest of the day.

            1. Danielle*

              Doesn’t this assume that people are as likely to be lying as they are to be telling the truth at any given time?

              1. Media Monkey*

                Yes. and i would say that in a sensible system you’d only be testing people you reasonably believed to be guilty/ lying. so 80% accuracy seems massively low.

          2. anon here*

            They have done studies. Most people are both very confident in their ability to detect liars and also not much better than chance. The NYer published an article called Duped in 2007 that cites research and studies.

        2. Worldwalker*

          Working with sex offenders .., so there’s a 20% chance that they’re either unjustly penalizing people, or unleashing predators on the community.

          A 20% chance of doing one of those things is unacceptably high.

          1. Observer*

            Exactly. That’s just horrifying. Because this is not just about what flavors of ice cream to have. This really is about making or breaking people’s lives.

      4. Bilateralrope*

        Is 80% the false positive or the false negative rate ?

        If someone can’t answer that question then they don’t know enough to say how accurate the test in question is.

        1. Mentally Spicy*

          The “80%” statistic was debunked decades ago. Most scientists who have evaluated the mass of evidence on the subject give the figure as more like 60%. Not much more accurate than guessing.

          But all of that is missing the point. The polygraph is used by law enforcement as a psychological tool. Consider this scenario:

          You’ve arrested a subject who you believe murdered his wife. You don’t yet have concrete physical evidence that he is guilty but you have strong enough evidence that it’s looking likely. Ideally, you need him to confess.

          So you say “would you be willing to take a polygraph test”? You may even frame it as “just to eliminate you as a suspect”. He will probably agree either because he feels he can probably “pass” the test or he feels that a refusal would make him look guilty.

          So he takes the test. The results of the test are completely irrelevant. You let the suspect stew for a little while, possibly getting increasingly worried about the outcome. When you return you have the “results” in your hand and you say “ok, I have to tell you it’s not looking great for you. The results we’re seeing here indicate that you’re lying about some stuff. Is there anything you want to tell us?”

          The suspect thinks that the game is up. So he confesses.

          In other words the polygraph is used not to determine innocence or guilt but as an evidence gathering tool. It’s psychological theatre! If you’re being put on a polygraph it’s because the police already have good reason to believe that you’re guilty.

          1. Criminologist*

            That would depend on what the goal is. The goal should be finding the truth; the above aims at getting a confession.

          2. Amber*

            That’s not getting the truth, it’s getting a confession. There are a lot of people who make false confessions because of tactics like that from police.

            1. just some guy*

              Exactly. It’s no more reliable or ethical than beating suspects until they confess, but it makes it easier for people to kid themselves that what they’re doing is excusable in the interests of “justice”.

            2. Elizabeth West*

              I was gonna say…this was mentioned in my Police Patrol class (along with other tactics) as how they’re not really looking at the machine but the suspect’s behavior. The idea is to pressure someone into confessing, not to accurately determine whether they’re telling the truth or not.

              I liked my instructor, but I’m sure he was probably the “good cop” before he retired. He was so affable he could make you spill your guts like Chunk in The Goonies, without the blender.

      5. Dawn*

        If I were her I’d be more concerned that only 80% of the people in the sex offender treatment centre are testing positive for sex offenses, but that’s just me.

    3. Bananapants Modiste*

      I guess the police (atleast in some states) uses polygraph testing for hiring and believes in them.

      For what it’s worth: A relative (former special forces) recently applied for a police job.
      In the interview, he was asked if he had ever had training to beat a lie detector test.
      He truthfully answered yes (trained in the military) and was immediately removed from the candidate list. Oh well.

      1. FrivYeti*

        The police in many states have a long record of trusting clearly bad methodologies as long as those methodologies tend to give them convictions.

        2. sparkle emoji*

          Yep, junk science has a long standing place in the legal system. Bite mark analysis (largely popularized due to a one man campaign) is one that was used in court that’s a particular pet peeve of mine.

        3. Quill*

          Yes. A lot of “forensic” technology was not tested or developed to the degree that we consider scientifically valid or useful, (even at the time of its creation) and our legal system based on precedent is very poorly set up to deal with matters of science as opposed to matters of interpreting the applications of previous laws, so law enforcement as a whole is never going to shed any forensic method with long established legal precedent, regardless of how poorly it works.

          1. linger*

            Case in point: Bruce Goldfarb’s 18 Tiny Deaths is a biography of Frances Glessner Lee, and her decades-long campaign for the system of coroner investigation of unexplained and suspicious deaths (wherein coroners were politically appointed, not necessarily medically trained, and often corrupt) to be replaced by a system of medical examiners trained in forensics. As one means to this end, she famously created the Nutshell Studies: a set of detailed dioramas of death scenes for use as a training tool. But here we are 60 years after her death, and only a third of jurisdictions have moved to using trained medical examiners. Despite what you might expect from CSI, half of all suspicious deaths in America today are still only handled by coroners.

      2. Observer*

        I guess the police (atleast in some states) uses polygraph testing for hiring and believes in them

        Uses them for hiring does not necessarily mean “believes in them.” And even if they do, we know that the police have often relied on junk science and it can take *decades* to get them to change, once they take something on.

        In the interview, he was asked if he had ever had training to beat a lie detector test.

        In other words, they *know* that it’s not that hard to get around the test.

      3. Orv*

        Some police departments will also reject you if your IQ is too high. They’re looking for a particular type of person.

      4. H3llifIknow*

        In my poly, I was asked if I had researched any methods to beat a polygraph. I had thought about it, but didn’t end up doing so, so even though I truthfully answered “nope” my answer was seen as “ambiguous”.

      5. Sabina*

        I worked as a civilian HR person in a law enforcement agency for 21 years. Our applicants were required to take a polygraph exam. My observation was they were useless in weeding out applicants that later became dishonest employees (we fired more than one cop for stealing from arrestees, businesses, and/or the Department itself. ). Also useless were the pre-employment psychological exams, but that’s another story.

    4. MBK*

      Yep. The only thing a polygraph can detect reliably is how good the subject is at controlling a typical physical response to anxiety.

    5. What_the_What*

      Yep! I had to take one when I was 18 and working at a bar (before the 21 drinking age). Money had gone missing from the registers a few times. So, all of us who had access had to take a poly. I wasn’t stealing money (although I was WILDLY bad at my job and could never remember how much anything cost, so maybe I was part of the problem). At the end of the test, the polygrapher said, “you have the guiltiest conscience I’ve ever seen. Your poly is a mess. A piece of advice, if you are ever arrested for a crime and offered a poly, even though you’re innocent DO NOT DO IT.” Knock wood, I’ve never had to since.

    6. Worldwalker*

      I know for a fact that I can beat them. A college friend was doing some project about them for a psych class, and recruited his friends as test subjects. He had to ask me to quit playing with the GSR meter while we were waiting to start—I could see the reading (or was it audio? I forget), so I was amusing myself making it go up and down. Respiration rate is of course under manual control, and I have some control over my heart rate and BP. (This all goes back to an interest in biofeedback around the time — I practiced)

      Besides, all “lie” detectors are capable of detecting at all is actually stress. A totally honest person is likely to feel more stress at being accused of something than an experienced criminal.

      1. Stipes*

        lol, now I’m imagining someone with really good control of their physiology hooked up to a polygraph and using it to draw little pictures, just to make fun of the test-givers.

        1. Database Developer Dude*

          I wonder if there could be some sort of sexual harassment charge coming out of a polygraph session, if the examinee has really good control of their physiology and the examiner is a member of the appropriate sex…..so the examinee modifies their reactions to make it obvious they’re attracted to the examiner…….

          1. UKDancer*

            I don’t know. I do remember the TV series “Lie to Me” had a bit where they showed that polygraph technology didn’t work when they asked a very attractive woman to ask the questions and the test subject (who had been passing when being questioned by a man) started failing because he was responding to her and getting excited.

            I thought it was interesting.

      1. A person*

        And a detective, nonetheless. That’s not even going into the deontology of having these people from the police and the judicial forces taking part into this farce.

        1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

          Oh cops love them. Everyone else knows they are unreliable, cops use them to try to force confessions. Remember cops are legally allowed to lie to you so they threaten the lie detector or if you have one, they say you failed.

          1. JustaTech*

            I remember reading a “funny” story years ago about a guy the cops were sure had done some thing (not violent) and wanted a confession, so they hooked him up to a copy machine that had a piece of paper with the word “liar” printed on it, so they would ask a question and hit “copy” and the machine would spit out a piece of paper that said “liar” and the guy confessed.

            So clearly they know it’s bupkis.

              2. But Of Course*

                Yes, because when David Simon spent his year with the Baltimore PD (documented in Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets) a couple of BPD officers did that with a suspect. It also made an appearance in Homicide: Life On The Street.

                1. Elizabeth West*

                  I read that book; wasn’t there a thing where someone on days kept complaining about the state of the desk they shared with someone on nights? So the night shift cops left a paper cup full of hole punch dots with no bottom on the desk, he picked it up, and it spilled. Then they did it again, and then they finally rigged it to fall from the light fixture.

                  Maybe I’m thinking of a different book, but it was funny as hell.

          2. Orv*

            It’s a bit like how studies have shown that drug sniffing dogs mostly react to cues from their handlers. Police love them because they can use them to fabricate “evidence” to justify a search.

        2. Cj*

          I watch a lot of two crime shows, and cops put a lot of reliance on them even though they’re not admissible in court. it definitely will make them stop looking at a suspect, or look at someone more closely depending on whether they pass or not.

              1. Stipes*

                They’re “two crime” shows — shows that always revolve around exactly two crimes. It’s an innovative new genre!

      3. Richard Hershberger*

        Not really. The vast majority of lawyers have absolutely zero interactions with polygraphs. The practice of law is, for the most part, very mundane

        1. NotAnotherManager!*

          This. There is a very narrow section of the law that would have any exposure to polygraphs, absent maybe a passing notation in their evidence class about their admissibility. I worked in legal for 20+ years, and never once did a polygraph come up in any case I worked on.

          I always find it kind of wild that lawyers are assumed to be experts in all areas of the law. When one of my family members had an employment dispute, an elder relative kept pressuring me to ask my firm to take their case despite my explaining multiple times what a disservice that would be to the family member because the lawyers I worked with did not practice anything close to that area of law and they needed someone with experience for such a complex issue.

          1. All Lawyers are Not Alike*

            This! There are A LOT of laws out there and lawyers don’t and can’t know all of them (though they are trained to issue spot). People need to stop assuming a general lawyer will know about a specific area of law that is different than their specific area of practice. You don’t ask a neuro surgeon to do heart surgery, why would you ask a tax lawyer about family law, an employment lawyer about education law, a bankruptcy lawyer about health care law, etc.

            Alison, you too! An employment law firm should be knowledgeable about HR practices (and admittedly lawyers on the whole may be better about issue spotting to ask someone to look into it), but other types of law firms aren’t necessarily any more knowledgeable about HR matters than a random non-lawyer company.

          2. Deejay*

            Fictional portrayals don’t help where people just go to “my lawyer” for anything from defence against false accusations to divorce/inheritance disputes.

            See also the Omnidisciplinary Scientist who’s an expert in astrophysics, geology, genetics, whatever the plot needs them to be. It’s sort of justified with two of the most famous “scientist as hero” characters in popular culture – Spock and the Doctor. At least they’re aliens with superior intellects and long lifespans so they have the smarts and time to learn lots of different fields in great detail. For us mere humans it’s a lot less believable.

      6. Ellie*

        I’m thinking they’d already made their mind up about the receptionist, and just wanted to use it as a bluff to either catch her, or make her confess. As an earlier comment suggested, they’re used by police to help get a confession, not to find out the truth of a situation. Putting everyone else through that stress just to catch one person was a horrible thing to do though.

        I’ve got to wonder… if she was the only person of colour in the organisation, were they really sure that she stole the money? Or did they just assume she did? I mean, I would have thought it would be easier to just put a hidden camera in the reception area. If money only goes missing on her watch, then she’s guilty, right? So why didn’t they do that?

    2. Regina Phalange*

      Came to say this. They are total bunk and any use of them, including those silly Vanity Fair things they make celebs do, fill me with rage.

      1. Deejay*

        One of the many reasons I’m glad the Jeremy Kyle show was axed in the UK (although sadly it took a suicide to make it happen) was his utter faith in lie detectors. If the test said you were a liar, he’d call you a liar and wouldn’t hear a word of dispute.

        And if you couldn’t take the test for medical reasons or it came up inconclusive? LIAR!

        I suspect if you tried to tell him about how experts say they’re not reliable or showed him a dictionary definition of inconclusive, he’d just go off on his usual “I know best” argument of “Do these so-called experts have the top-rated daytime TV show?” as if popularity was a guarantee of truth.

        No, Jeremy, they don’t. And now, neither do you.

    4. BradC*

      Yep, absolute pseudoscience. Polygraphs are utterly unreliable for discerning truth from falsehood.

      The only thing they ARE effective for is as an interrogation technique, as a means to coerce or trick a suspect into confessing.

      The “results” of a polygraph (subjective pass or fail, interpretation of wavy lines) are (almost without exception) inadmissible as evidence in any court proceeding in almost every jurisdiction. What IS admissible is WHAT YOU SAY during a test, in the same way that what you tell a detective can be used against you.

      2. Hey Now*

        I know. It’s stunning how many people are calling them “unreliable” when they’re just bullshit pseudoscience. I find it tragic how brainwashed most folks are by the copaganda and detective shows on TV—people get sent to prison, lose jobs, etc. just because everyone wants to believe these things are for real. I remember my time on a jury trying to explain to some of the fellow jurors just why they couldn’t give a defendant a polygraph for the trial. I wanted to claw my face off.

    1. A Simple Narwhal*

      Now that my words have stopped failing me, this was absolutely completely bananapants!

      What was the purpose of any of this?? It sounds like they had proof that the receptionist was stealing, why did they go through this whole song and dance? As Alison said, they could have just fired the receptionist or called the actual police.

      It feels like they wanted to give the former detective a chance to play cop again? With the absolute clusterfudge this was I would absolutely believe that they’re a former detective due to incompetence.

      Or if I really want to put on a tinfoil hat and start writing my own fanfiction, maybe the receptionist actually wasn’t the one stealing the money, but they were hoping to get her to confess to the crime anyway because the attorney or some other protected person was stealing and they wanted to pin it on her instead.

      …actually that sounds slightly less crazy than conducting 24 fake lie detectors tests when they have proof of who’s doing it and letting even more money go missing. What happened to the receptionist? Did the company ever go to the police?

        1. Boof*

          I thought the best (read, worst!) was that they let the person they knew was stealing keep stealing for, what, a month or so for this charade?

      3. OP Here*

        OP here. The receptionist was fired. I worked for this company many years ago and this was one of many goofy things the owners did. They did not involve the police because they said they didn’t want the publicity. This was a business that handled private loans between individuals and processed the payments for them.

  4. A Book about Metals*

    Sounds like someone had access to a lie detector machine and was looking for an excuse to use it

    1. K in Boston*

      Yes, the only way any of this makes any sense is that someone was REALLY bored, or there’s a reason Attorney’s son was a “former” police detective and they were just trying to keep him busy/give him some temporary employment.

      (I know this is way-off-base speculation, but the whole thing is so bananas so that only a bananas explanation makes sense to me.)

      1. A Book about Metals*

        I agree – there’s no logical explanation. Maybe someone had just seen “Meet the Parents” and thought it would be fun

    2. Irish Teacher.*

      Yeah, the best explanation I can come up with for the whole thing is that lawyer-owner fancied playing at being Sherlock Holmes or something and “solving the mystery” and expected the whole thing to end with her breaking down and confessing as soon as he pulled out the polygraph, complete with detailed explanation of how she did it and so on.

      When things didn’t end like a detective movie, he then just fired her.

    3. sparkle emoji*

      Yeah, only explanation that makes sense to me is someone involved was looking to play out their film noir fantasies at the expense of the employees.

    5. MsMaryMary*

      I suspect the attorney’s son was acting as a “consultant” and got paid for this whole charade.

  5. Pastor Petty Labelle*

    This is a whole office full of banana ensembles. Literally no higher up said, yeah I know you are a lawyer, but are you an employment attorney and why is this better than just firing the person?

    They literally allowed more money to go missing just to go through this loony charade.

    1. Don’t put metal in the science oven*

      I love banana ensemble. To go with the pants. Will it include accessories?

      1. Sharpie*

        For some reason my mind went to bananas playing in some kind of musical ensemble. A banana on a tuba! A banana playing the piano!

        1. I went to school with only 1 Jennifer*

          “Okay, so, in this scene we’ve got a whole bunch of bananas …. stay with me here … dressed up as bananas … and playing band music!”

    3. Bilateralrope*

      Especially when she passed the lie detector test and was fired anyway. Like they had already made up their mind but were hoping the lie detector would give them an excuse.

      Then the LW mentions that she was the only person of color working in the office and I suspect a different reason for the firing.

      1. OP Here*

        You could be right. The receptionist was hired because she said she was bilingual. The first day on the job, a Spanish-speaking customer came in and she didn’t understand a thing he said. I didn’t have much interaction with her, so I don’t know if she did the rest of the job ok. She worked there for a year, though, and the non-bilingual issue was a huge problem. It was the primary requirement of the job.

          1. OP Here*

            Who knows? This company hired people all the time without checking references or testing applicants to be sure they had the skills to do the job. Managers really weren’t managers. We were presented with the newest hire by the owners and expected to make it work. I have no idea how they chose their hires, except many of them were young and cute. They probably hired the receptionist because she “looked” like she must be a Spanish speaker. Once, I got a new typist…who could only type about 20 wpm by hunting and pecking. It was bananas there.

  6. Cats and Bats Rule*

    I would have the same reaction as Kate, and I would be absolutely livid to hear the outcome, and that the test wasn’t even real! OP’s company is disgusting.

    1. MigraineMonth*

      It sounds like the test they gave her was real, (unlike the managers, who got fake ones because ??), just no one cared about the results because they *already knew who was taking the money*.

      She may very well have “failed” it and thought she was going to get fired/charged with a crime because these assholes decided they wanted to pretend they played police on TV and play with polygraph equipment (and their employee’s lives).

      1. Cats and Bats Rule*

        I meant “real” in the sense that they knew who did it, but we’re putting the other non-managers through the ordeal.

    2. OP Here*

      I had no idea the non-management employees were treated like this until Kate told me about her experience. There was so much gossip and backbiting and so many other weird things happened there. This place was so, so toxic.

  7. Not Australian*

    “while it’s understandable to assume that attorneys must know and be following the law in their own workplaces, law firms seem to flout employment law pretty regularly”

    Yup. *Years* after smoking in the workplace was banned here, I found myself having to sit next to a chain smoker … in a legal office. As it happened, it suited me to stay in that job for a short while, but if it hadn’t they’d just have recruited somebody else. Lawyers know *all* about getting around the law…

    1. zuzu*

      Ask me why I found myself borrowing phone-tapping equipment from a private-investigator friend I met at the dog park when my higher-ups at the small law firm I worked at wanted me to “reimburse” them for the contributions they would have to make to the new retirement account they were instituting on my behalf because they didn’t like the fact that the law required them to treat me the same as them on the plan they had chosen.

      I pleaded exhaustion from a marathon brief-writing session when the office manager/wife of the principal first raised it to me and asked to talk again once I’d had a good sleep; next call was to my friend to get the equipment; the call after that was to another friend at the AG’s office, who asked if these were attorneys, and when I said yes, he said, “Figures. We’re the worst.”

      1. NotAnotherManager!*

        That’s appalling. One of the best parts of working for a law firm are the lawyer-grade benefits. One of my firms went a step further and scaled premiums by compensation level, so the attorneys actually paid more for theirs than the folks in the mail room.

      2. Paint N Drip*

        UUUGGGGHHHHH
        I’m the person who will walk the small business owners through these retirement plan options… this description just tells me that they are GREEDY
        I sincerely hope you’re away from these assclowns!!

        1. zuzu*

          OH THAT GUY WAS ALSO IN ON IT.

          I got him on tape trying to sweet-talk me into agreeing to “pay them back” by explaining to me how generous they were being to offer me benefits at all. I knew damn well I’d been getting screwed out of benefits once they’d hired me on an hourly basis (I’d been a contractor, paid through an agency, an arrangement that had worked for me at a point in my life when I struggling. They wanted to stop paying the agency because the agency fee was costing them money). But I didn’t have it in me at that point to figure out what I should be getting in terms of benefits. At least not until Julie, the office manager/wife – who had a law degree herself – told me that she wanted me to “pay her back” because she was generous, but it would just be *too* generous to offer me retirement benefits at the same level her husband got.

          So when I finally had the recorded conversation with her, I let her go on and on and on about how generous she was being and how grateful I should be, and finally I said, “What if I said no?” She went dead silent and finally told me she’d talk to me when she was in the office the next day. And that was the very first job I ever walked out of without having another one lined up. Julie tried to withhold my last paycheck, until I reminded her there were treble damages for doing so.

          I filed a claim for unemployment, citing constructive discharge, she opposed it, but I got a job before my appeal went through. I never did do anything with my recordings, but I still have the files.

      3. Boof*

        us-based financial nerd incoming – sounds like they picked a SEP ira, which lets you shelter a lot of business earnings for retirement (up to 20% or something slightly higher), but you have to pay everyone in the business equally. It’s nice because you have until april/tax deadline to contribute (unlike other things that are due by end of december) but has that “business” catch. (yeah I use it for my individual contract work when I see if I have enough left over at the end of the year to put into tax-differed retirement savings). That’s hilarious (/sad / enraging) that they tried to get you to pay it back >:( pick another plan or get your finances together earlier folks!

        1. Cmdrshprd*

          Clarify “but you have to pay everyone in the business equally?”

          I don’t think people need to be paid the same amount as in their salary, or the contribution amounts have to be the same, but rather the contributions rates/%s have to be the same?
          The company decides to contribute 5% of everyone’s salary, for someone making $50k that is $2,500, for $100k that is $5k, and for $150k that is $7.5k. But they can’t contribute 5% of a low level employee and 10/15% of a high level employee?

          1. Boof*

            “SEP IRA” is specifically for self employed or very small business
            “Generally, SEP IRAs are best for self-employed people or small-business owners with few or no employees.

            Here’s why: If you have employees whom the IRS considers eligible participants in your plan, you must contribute on their behalf, and those contributions must be an equal percentage of compensation to your own”

            So it’s not that everyone is getting equal pay, but everyone who’s in the SEP IRA business plan gets an equal contribution to the retirement plan. If the employers try to claw that back from their employees well 1) that totally violates the point of the SEP IRA which is to be for self employed or extremely small businesses 2) while the employee gets the money in their retirement account, it’s presumably inaccessible to them until they’re ready for retirement and many people might not want to just have that much their salary hidden from them without penalty (ie, in 2024 up to $69,000 can be put into the IRA)
            … I don’t know for sure that’s what it is but that’s just what it sounds like based on the description. Just chose another retirement plan boss!

          2. Boof*

            sorry misread the first time – yes the % of compensation must be the same. But not everyone wants to have (up to 25% of their total compensation, depending on what the boss chose) unavailable to them until retirement without penalty I would think!
            My employer does a retirement thing where they contribute a certain % but it’s not based at all on my own voluntary contributions nor do they attempt to claw it back out of our agreed upon salary!

      4. Garden Gnome*

        Or like my former boss who routinely asked me to do his continuing legal education seminars for him because he didn’t want to. His wife even offered to pay me. Of course I refused to do that, but it never stopped him from asking. As far as I know, his wife (who is not a lawyer) did all of them and somehow they (the CLE folks) have never caught on.

    2. Statler von Waldorf*

      Yup. I only worked at one law firm, and it was by far the workplace with the most labor law violations that I have ever worked at.

      The boss at one point flat out admitted to me it was cheaper to fight any labor law lawsuits in court than to follow the law. I really should have seen that for the red flag it was, but I was fresh out of the trades and in my first office job and I didn’t want to make waves. So I put up with it right up until they screwed with my check. I had to fight for eight months to get that check, which they delivered to me in the courtroom less than five minutes before my case was scheduled to be called. It was very educational experience.

      From what I hear, they still do it this to this very day. The simple math is that for every one like me that would raise a stink and eventually get paid, nine would choose to walk away just to get away from dealing with the massive headache the company would deliberately make sure you suffered. Capitalism for the win.

  8. Nicosloanica*

    Since lying and putting people in or out of comfort zones is part of an investigation, I don’t think I would have trusted the company’s assertion that they were “just pretending to interview everyone else” anyway. But maybe I watched too many episodes of The Closer.

    1. MigraineMonth*

      Should it be, though? Police are very effective at getting suspects to confess to crimes; unfortunately, they seem to be at least equally effective at getting people to confess to crimes they didn’t actually commit. That they’re allowed to lie during interrogations as well is just way too much power.

      (It can also lead to bizarre abuses of power on the part of the police, such as when they convinced a man who reported his elderly father missing to confess to murdering him. The police lied and said they’d found the father beaten to death, when in fact they’d found him at the airport trying to catch a flight.)

      1. Nicosloanica*

        Yes, however we feel about it, this is perfectly legal. Unfortunately you can’t trust any information the police give you during interrogation. I suppose the theory is an innocent person would never deviate from the truth even if they are exhausted, emotional, confused etc etc. They can also tell young people “we’ll let you go home if you just admit to X” and then arrest them for X if they admit it.

        1. Nicosloanica*

          Although TBH in that show and its spinoff, I found it way worse that they would often not reveal to the family of a decedent that the person had already been found dead, because they wanted to interrogate them before they knew that, so desperate parents etc who were still hoping their child might be found were isolated and interviewed, with the police already knowing full well that there was no hope. (I should start a new acronym, I’m not a lawyer but I watch a lot of legal themed TV haha. My advice is totally free and you get what you paid for …)

      2. Freya*

        In Australia, while it is legal for police to lie when conducting a police interview, any evidence obtained as a result of that lie may be considered inadmissible in court. This includes confessions and admissions of guilt. Police officers are supposed to ensure that the circumstances of any admission being made are such that it is unlikely that the truth of the admission is affected, so the interrogation techniques I see employed in (American) tv shows would make any information gained that way completely unusable.

  9. Abe Froman*

    This reads like some rogue manager’s bizarre desire to live out a Law and Order episode fantasy. Extremely strange and extremely unfair to all the employees that had to deal with that stress.

    1. ferrina*

      Absolutely. This totally reads like someone who has been blurring too much fiction and reality.

      And just think what that manager would have done if they had been watching Leverage instead! Or *eep!* if they had been watching Psych!

      1. Angela Zeigler*

        If it were Psych, the manager would have noticed the expensive brands of jewelry the receptionist started wearing just after the money went missing, and there wouldn’t have been much of a case left to solve!

  10. It’s A Butternut Squash*

    I’m very confused. Was there actual evidence that the receptionist had been stealing? If so, why wasn’t she confronted with that? And if not… they decided it was the one person of color and then fired that person after she passed a lie detector test?

    1. Clisby*

      That’s what I don’t get. Assuming it’s true that she passed a lie detector test, it seems that would have placed her in a stronger position if she had chosen to sue for racial discrimination.

      1. 1-800-BrownCow*

        I’m curious what evidence they did have that the receptionist was stealing. However, I am assuming they lied to the receptionist and told her she failed the lie detector test.

        Seems like a lot of fishy stuff went on at that place.

        1. Cj*

          I wonder who else had access to the cash. the receptionist probably took the payments and it was the most likely suspect. but even if the stuff stopped after she was fired, it doesn’t necessarily mean she was a guilty one. the person really doing it could have just stopped since they gotten it away up to that point, and were no longer a suspect after the receptionist was fired.

    2. Pay no attention...*

      Yeah, I think the only rational explanation is that they decided the receptionist did it without ANY evidence and they were looking for a way to pin it on her. Weird that a fake test administered by an untrained person still “passed” the top suspect. It’s so bizarre, I wonder if the owner/partner or the son was the real thief and all of this theatrics were just a distraction.

      If cash payments are going missing, and you don’t want to just fire the top suspect for reasons, then there are still a bunch of other alternatives:
      1. stop taking cash and only accept e-payments or checks.
      2. change the process for who can accept payments — e.g. now they must only be made directly to the lawyer assigned to the case.
      3. put a locked drop box for deposits that only the owners can access
      4. make sure that 2 people are in reception to accept all payments.
      5. put a camera in the reception area (with proper notice according to the law)

      1. Meep*

        Honestly, if I was the thief (not that I ever would be) and we did this whole song and dance for the receptionist to be fired, it would definitely be enough for me to stop at that place of employment and look elsewhere. I already got away with thousands. Why push my luck further now that the scapegoat is gone?

        1. Pay no attention...*

          I think that’s why they waited another month and let it go on, while apparently not changing anything about how they handle payments. It would be super easy for the thief to just take a pause while they hire a new receptionist, and then quietly start up stealing again. “Those darn receptionists always stealing!” s/

          1. Meep*

            Based on how absolutely batcrap crazy this whole tale is (like taken out of a drama), could be to see if any of the managers leaked the info or if it stopped on its own (indicating a manager?). Or to “gather more evidence”. Who knows what the owner was thinking, because it wasn’t logically.

          2. ferrina*

            And also….a polygraph? That’s terrible evidence (as demonstrated by the receptionist passing it).

            If (for some weird reason) they wanted to try to gather more evidence, why not an exploding dye pack like banks use? Clearly they needed to workshop this more.

      2. Ellis Bell*

        Honestly, although it’s speculative, this was my take too. They didn’t care about the fact that the money was still going missing because they were ones taking it. They thought a polygraph would be a good way to pin it on the receptionist because she’d either be nervous and fail it, or they would just tell her she failed it. If they had actual evidence, they would have just used that to fire her, and if they didn’t they should have called the cops.

    3. Myrin*

      I mean, OP says “an internal investigation was done and it was discovered that the payments were being pocketed by the front desk receptionist”.
      With people who behave like the ones in this firm, one has to wonder about the methods they used for this internal investigation, but it doesn’t sound like OP doubted the receptionist’s guilt.

  12. K in Boston*

    Every part of this wild. The attorney owner. The former police detective. The manager not even hooked up to a lie detector during their test. The fact that the tests took place a MONTH after they’d already figured out who did it and they just let the receptionist keep pocketing money. That the receptionist passed the lie detector test and they fired her, anyway (which they should’ve, but then what was the POINT of the whole dumb charade?). My goodness.

    1. The Unionizer Bunny*

      Since the “thieving” employee passed her polygraph test, the POINT has to be questioned. I think the entire “someone has been stealing” story was a pretext for doing this to everyone else. Polygraphs include “calibration” questions (like “write down the number ‘3’ on this paper, then I will ask you if it is ‘1’, if it is ‘2’, if it is ‘3’, if it is ‘4’, and if it is ‘5’, and you answer ‘no’ each time”) to which the answer should always be objectively knowable (with certainty), and if you avoided the “humiliation” of everyone having to answer in front of everyone else, you could even pose “calibration” questions unique to each employee and none of them would realize. Or ask “Are you sleeping with the bosses wife?” of just the one person.

      Was there even any money missing in the first place? Did they fire her as a cover-up for what they were really doing? Ending their investigation may have been the stupidest thing did – because it ends the arguments for confidentiality. Employees can compare notes about the questions they were asked, if they even remember. Though, if they don’t, a FOIA request (or, if the state allows employees to request a copy of their personnel file, that) would produce a transcript of everyone’s interrogation (or just the employee’s, for comparison), which might reveal questions that were unlawful despite anyone’s innocence . . . for instance, in 1964, the NLRB held (in Johnny’s Poultry) that employers who were defending against an Unfair Labor Practice charge would themselves be guilty of an Unfair Labor Practice if they did not communicate each of these three things before interviewing/interrogating employees:

      A) the purpose of their questions
      B) a pledge of non-retaliation to (lack of) answers
      C) non-coercive questioning (employee’s responses must be voluntary)

      If there were disability-related questions, that would run afoul of the ADA – so many risks!

  13. Observer*

    I’m betting that someone was worried about firing the *one* person of color and so decided on this charade. But once she passed the test, someone else decided that they still need tofire her, because it’s too much money.

    Aside from all of the other stupidity involved, this by itself makes this especially stupid. Firing her based on what they found out would have been fine. Firing her after a polygraph that *she passed*? Now, it starts looking like they did an investigation, did *not* find a culprit, and *still* fired her. A good lawyer would probably have a lot of fun with that…

  14. Yup*

    At an agency I once worked at, people were reporting money missing from their purses/desks and management called us all in one by one to see if we’d noticed anything missing. It turned out one employee was an addict and in desperate need of money. He ended up being fired for stealing and provided with an opportunity to enroll in an addiction program, which felt like the best possible solution. But one VP didn’t want to let him go and tried to negotiate him staying on as it wasn’t his fault and he was suffering.

    I get it. It was a kind thought. But management’s job is also to protect employees and it felt like a way not to have to do the hard thing. Thankfully the first option prevailed, but I always felt that the people in charge couldn’t always be relied upon to make the decisions they were paid to. story is like that X 1000. Management needs to deal with the situation, not make it so that they don’t have to.

    1. Boof*

      Uhg. I get addiction has a lot of physical components but I’m really tired of saying it forces you to steal/lie/cheat. It does not; I know there is a high drive to seek the drug and the drug tends to lower the inhibitions etc in a vicious cycle but there’s no reason to let a person in the throws of addiction keep up the bad behaviors around it – that’s pretty much full on enabling there.

    2. Industry Behemoth*

      I wasn’t there then, but a past employer caught an EA embezzling through her executive’s expense reports. He tried to keep her on by offering to reimburse the firm out of his own pocket, but of course they couldn’t accept that.

  15. MassMatt*

    Can we please permanently ban the erroneous and misleading terms “lie detector” and “lie detector test”? I get that they are commonly used terms but that doesn’t make them right.

    As an undergrad we did a unit on the polygraph in a psychology class and I was able to utterly demolish it with minimal research and a couple very simple experiments. There is a reason polygraphs are inadmissible in court.

    It’s weird that this workplace went through this bizarre charade all because they were too gutless to simply fire the receptionist. Or come up with a better way to prove she was stealing. Or ask themselves why the receptionist is handling thousands of dollars in cash!

    Think of what all this cost the company—not just thousands of dollars stolen, but the wasted time for all the managers to come up with this absurd plan, and implement it, and wasted time for everyone going through this senseless ritual, and the cost of the plummeting morale as employees realize their company is led by clueless buffoons!

    1. A person*

      Is polygraph the right term, then ?
      Entirely agree on the fact that they should be relegated to the archives of history.

    2. Clisby*

      Polygraph results are not always inadmissible in court – or at least, have not always been. I sat on a jury in Ohio in 1996 – a guy was charged with child molestation – where a polygraph test was admitted. We on the jury were all surprised – the prosecutor and defense attorney later talked to us, and explained that both sides had agreed to it. The judge told us it was the first time in her judicial career that she’d seen a polygraph test in evidence.

      1. Velawciraptor*

        Polys are still admissible in NM. Defendants can’t be forced to take them or anything, but on occasion, defense attorneys may seek polygraph testing for the clients. And, IIRC, sex offender probation requires that probationers periodically submit to polygraph testing.

      2. Nonsense*

        According to lawinfo, 19 states allow polygraph results in criminal cases, although 5 of those states have restrictions regarding which cases can use them. However, a defendant is allowed to bring in expert testimony to refute the polygraph’s reliability.

    3. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

      And what occurs to me is that even if “lie detector” tests are generally reliable… they aren’t infallible. So if she manages to ‘pass’ the test (ie she says she didn’t steal, and the “lie detector” determines that she is telling the truth) they’ve then completely undermined their approach. A quick google puts the accuracy at only 65-80%…

    4. Typity*

      Yes, exactly. A polygraph is based on 100-plus-year-old technology combined with a lot of superstition. It’s a psychological weapon again suspects (or employees), used to intimidate and mislead. Should’ve been abandoned decades ago.

    5. Richard Hershberger*

      Receptionist handling thousands in cash: ding! ding! ding! At least not without some control system. This is a solved problem, for any organization with a lick of sense. Not also the implication that lots of people had access to the cash. Huh?

      1. Peanut Hamper*

        Very much this. You can always change your processes to make sure there are two sets of eyes (or more) on cash to make sure people won’t steal.

        If McDonald’s can figure this out, then surely well-educated attorneys can.

        1. Paint N Drip*

          I actually would guess that McD’s has a BETTER grasp on stuff like this because there’s no ego. If you think it could NEVER happen on your watch, then you end up in a situation like this where the receptionist pockets thousands

      2. H3llifIknow*

        Yes! Either some form of 2 person integrity where receptionts A and B both initial/sign the envelope or register, or the person giving the cash and the person accepting initial it in a log book or something so that there’s a specific way to balance out what was taken in that day. It really shouldn’t be *that hard*.

      3. Sara without an H*

        Agreed. The whole ludicrous charade undoubtedly demoralized the entire staff without solving the underlying problem.

    6. Productivity Pigeon*

      I’m Swedish and no one would ever even for a second consider using one. That includes the police and our intelligence agencies.

      1. UKDancer*

        Same in the UK unless things have changed in the many years since I studied law. I am surprised when I watch Cruliminal Minds and Law and Order that the US still uses them in some areas.

        1. londonedit*

          Yes, absolute madness. I associate them with those awful shows like Jerry Springer etc. Cannot imagine them ever being used for actual police work.

    7. 1 Non Blonde*

      Um, wut? It’s a colloquial term. Do you also demand that we say “bandage” and not “bandaid”?

      I despise the terms “sheetrock” and “cement” but would not go on a public forum demanding others to drop the terminology just because I happen to know the differences.

      1. just some guy*

        The problem with “lie detector” is that many people interpret this, reasonably enough but wrongly, to mean “a machine which is good at detecting lies”, which leads to their being abused.

        If misuse of terms like “sheetrock” and “cement” was leading to comparable harm, you’d be well within your rights to correct people on those too.

  16. Falling Diphthong*

    I have noticed a real trend in examples of people head-scratchingly reasoning: “I am a smart person, knowledgeable about field X. Therefore I am right about this thing over in field Y, based on my gut feelings, which are facts.” I think humans are not nearly as good at logic and objective reasoning as we tell ourselves.

    A prime example is Ada Byron Lovelace–who did not, in fact, parlay legitimate brilliance at math into a system to win at gambling–so it’s not new. Just more examples leaping out in the information fire hose.

    1. MigraineMonth*

      Nobel-prize winner Dr Linus Pauling popularized the myth that vitamin C would boost the immune system and cure a cold. He was a doctor chemistry, not of medicine.

      1. The other sage*

        It doesn’t boost your immune system, or it doesn’t cure a cold? About the second one I knew, but if it doesn’t boost your immune system I would like to find some reliable sources about that.

        Anyway, thanks for the info :)

        1. Boof*

          Uptodate:
          “Infection — Vitamin C may have a minor role in reducing the duration of cold symptoms in adults, although the clinical importance of this is likely small [73]. Further, there is no evidence that regular vitamin C supplementation reduces the incidence of the common cold. (See “The common cold in adults: Treatment and prevention”.)

          Kidney stones — Vitamin C increases urinary oxalate excretion and may increase the risk of kidney stones. This is discussed elsewhere. (See “Kidney stones in adults: Epidemiology and risk factors”.)”

          1. Worldwalker*

            It was indicated by some of his early research. That was later shown to be erroneous, but at least he had a basis for it.

            What’s weird is that anecdotally, it seems to prevent Con Crud. Three years that I went to GenCon and came home with the Crud; the two subsequent years, I took vitamin C (2000 mg/day for a week before/after) and didn’t get sick. And GenCon was a superspreader event before the term existed. Yeah, the plural of anecdote is not data. And maybe the placebo effect works on Con Crud. But whatever happened, it did seem to work.

            2. Freya*

              My own theory with that is that at a con, you’re not getting outside and not getting as much vitamin d as usual, and vitamin c boosts the efficacy of what vitamin d you do get.

  18. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

    > I feel so bad for her and all the other employees who had to participate. I honestly can’t remember what I told my department. Thinking about it makes me sick.

    As a manager, I would have insisted that managers be held to the same standard as the individual contributors, including myself, and on taking the real test.

    But but but – managers weren’t under suspicion… (why not?) were the rest of the employees still under suspicion or did they have actual evidence it was the receptionist? If they had evidence already, why try to flush her out into confessing? Why not just confront her with it? If they didn’t have evidence, better to gather more evidence (or maybe report it to the police for an investigation?) rather than carry this out, since the lie detector test isn’t evidence (as the answer points out).

    > I couldn’t figure out why we weren’t just letting her go.

    Surely this depends on whether there is actual evidence, not just “we think she did it”, as that’s quite a dangerous precedent although legal. What happens when something genuinely goes missing in the office, the person who last had it is accused and fired, and it later turns up down the back of the printer (or whatever) where it got knocked during a desk move?

    1. OP Here*

      In hindsight, I certainly should have questioned their reasoning. I managed a completely different department, so wasn’t privy to how they came to the conclusion that she had taken the cash. My employees, and Kate and her former co-workers for that matter, didn’t really interact with that side of the building. The place was so dysfunctional that many things seemed normal after a while. I had forgotten about this incident until Kate brought it up in a conversation about the weird shit that went on there. I wondered if companies could require employees to take these tests legally, which is why I reached out to Alison.

  19. sheworkshardforthemoney*

    There are a few lines in the sand for me but being accused of a crime and told that a lie detector test would be administered would be one a big honking ditch for me. No thanks. I’m quitting that job first.

      1. ScruffyInternHerder*

        Absolutely. You’ve got a former police detective here (side note: WTF????) administering the test and you’re in essence, “lawyering up”. They equate lawyering up to guilty, not “I have a right to a lawyer and you have the right to lie to me if you see fit so I’m getting a lawyer to put us on equal footing”.

    2. Cinnamon Stick*

      What I’d love to say I’d do it take it, pass it, then quit.

      Unfortunately, I have a fair amount of anxiety and it would likely skew the results.

      1. sheworkshardforthemoney*

        Me too, my anxiety would spike through the roof. When I was a kid, I was falsely accused of stealing money and not even my mother believed me. A few days later the real culprit confessed when they couldn’t explain a new video game. I didn’t receive an apology from anyone and it still makes me mad years later.

    3. Orv*

      I think they were hoping the receptionist would quit rather than take the test, thus letting them avoid firing her and potentially looking discriminatory.

  20. AnonAnon for this*

    “For what it’s worth, while it’s understandable to assume that attorneys must know and be following the law in their own workplaces, law firms seem to flout employment law pretty regularly. It’s quite odd.”

    It’s the Dunning-Kruger effect. Attorneys tend to assume that because they know one area of law, they’re also competent in other areas of law. This frequently manifests as law firms doing thing that straight up violate employment law. Or patting themselves on the back when they do something required by law (such as make accommodations for breastfeeding employees) as if they’ve granted some great boon rather than just finally started following the law.

    –lawyer who had to sue her employer for violating equal pay laws

    1. CommanderBanana*

      ^^ THIS. It’s like a podiatrist deciding he’s going to take a whack at brain surgery. Like, yes, you’re both doctors, but it’s not the same thing!

    2. Emmy Noether*

      I think it’s part this and part that the more familiar one is with The Law, the less anxious one tends to be about breaking it.

      I’m in a law-adjacent field, and laymen tend to be nervous about nebulous “consequences” of breaking the law that just don’t exist in this field. Cynically, lawyers know not all laws have teeth.

      It’s a general phenomenon. Physicians are often cavalier with their health, etc. etc.

  21. musical chairs*

    What proof did they have that was somehow good enough for them to be sure she was stealing, but not better than a lie detector? I truly don’t understand this story. I think they made up more than the polygraph pretense.

  22. reputationcoded*

    This is pure speculation but I wonder if they didn’t want to file an actual police report because they were concerned the investigation would find other things going on there. What a crazy way to handle this!

    1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

      but they wouldn’t have to file a police report to fire her. They police report would only be necessary if they wanted to pursue charges. Firing her, absent some other legal protection such as a contract or a union, is as simple as “you’re fired” and having her escorted out of the building. You don’t have to build a whole legal case to justify it.

      1. Ellis Bell*

        It sounds like they were afraid of firing someone who might be able to say they were fired for discriminatory reasons. So, it would make sense to check that you definitely had your evidence of wrongdoing before you fire the person and if you didn’t have any, get a third party like the police to dig a little deeper than you can.

  23. Education Mike*

    This absolutely sounds like something out of The Office. When you’re doing something that would be totally on par for Michael Scott, it’s time to rethink your choices.

    1. Ellis Bell*

      I was thinking of Michael Scott when OP theorised that the owner was afraid of being called a racist if he fired the one black employee. I’m just picturing the receptionist’s lawyers calling up the owner with a ton of “Diversity Day” style quotes for anyone who is familiar with that episode. This can’t be the only insensitive and dehumanising stunt this guy has ever pulled.

  24. Somehow I Manage*

    Police can employ fake lie detector tests (I’ve heard of one where a suspect was hooked up to a copy machine). Police can lie during interrogations (i.e. telling a suspect that their partner in crime just confessed in the other room). But this is highly illegal and inappropriate. It sounds like the business felt like covering their butts by having everyone take the test so as not to single someone out. But if you have evidence that someone is stealing, why not just fire them?

  25. Llama Identity Thief*

    LW, just to give you context on how thoroughly bananapants this is…

    This is the first new addition to the “Wait, what?!” category on this site in half a year. It is the most “Wait, what?!” thing Alison Manager Green has seen in six months of letters.

    Illegal, yes, and unquestionably wild.

  26. Marzipan Shepherdess*

    The LW buried the lede, but here it is: ” I should also mention the receptionist was a person of color, while the rest of the office was white.”

    The PTB in that firm were afraid of being accused of racism if they fired the receptionist outright, even though she WAS the thief. She (or her lawyer) could have made the case that she was being singled out/picked on/assumed to be a criminal solely on the basis of her ethnicity. The resultant bad publicity for LW’s company could easily have become a PR nightmare far exceeding the actual crime of stealing.

    Having everyone take a (presumed) lie detector test was the company’s way of covering its own tailfeathers (so to speak); if EVERYONE took the test, then NO ONE was being singled out, right? So no accusations of racism would have been possible!

    Crowning irony; the thief passed the polygraph test! No surprise there – those tests are notoriously unreliable and plenty of criminals have passed them with flying colors. If you’re amoral enough to commit crimes, you’re very possibly amoral enough to feel no guilt or concern over what you’ve done – no guilt, no failed polygraph. Well, duh!

  27. Scarlet ribbons in her hair*

    “In this 1986 exposé of the polygraph trade, CBS 60 Minutes set up a test in which three polygraph examiners chosen at random from the New York telephone directory were asked to administer polygraph examinations to four different employees of the CBS-owned magazine, Popular Photography, regarding the theft of a camera and lens. In fact, no theft had occurred.

    Each polygrapher was told that a different employee was suspected as the likely culprit. In each case, the polygrapher found the person who had been fingered to be deceptive.”

    I put the above in quotes because the words are not my words – they are the words of the webpage creator. A link is provided in the comments below.

    3. What_the_What*

      Wow. That was wild. And the absolute refusal to admit how inaccurate they are on the part of those making money from polygraphs was off the charts!

  28. irritable vowel*

    Have worked with lawyers in the past, and yes, can confirm. Their approach to life seems to be to do whatever they want, because “what are they going to do, sue me? lol”

  29. Reality.Bites*

    I feel it’s necessary to pass on the advice of George Costanza – “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”

  30. Fiachra*

    I think the most sitcom-esque part of this is the fact that their elaborate scheme involved letting the thefts continue for a month while they got everything together. Truly picking the ‘clever’ solution over the good solution.

  31. tabloidtained*

    That’s terrible. :(

    Wish we’d get around to accepting and maybe acknowledging by law that polygraphs and most forensic “science” are complete junk.

  34. H3llifIknow*

    In order to get my TS/SCI clearance, I was required to take a polygraph test. Depending on what type/level of clearance and access you’re getting it can a Single Scope, a Lifestyle, a full on skeletons in your closet etc… poly. I’m a boring, 35 years married person, and even I was sweating. There were really only about 8-10 questions but they asked them in slightly different ways over and over until I just wanted to cry and get out of there. I know they’re nonsense, but if you fail your poly, it can be used to deny your security clearance (there are a couple caveats to that) but it’s a major hurdle to getting and maintaining a high level clearance.

    1. Kesnit*

      I had to take a poly when I got a government job that required TS/SCI. I was in my mid-20s, was coming out of the military, and already held a SECRET clearance (because of being in the military). And I was a nervous wreck. I KNEW I had nothing to hide, but that didn’t stop me from wondering and worrying.

      It doesn’t help that the setup has more wires than the electric chair!

    2. Database Developer Dude*

      I thought it was Full Scope, Lifestyle, or CI. I understood Full Scope to be both, and Lifestyle was the one that was full on skeletons in your closet…. are there more levels of polys of which I was unaware?

      1. H3llifIknow*

        Yes, thank you! I couldn’t for the life of me remember the term “Full Scope” which is what I mean by “all the skeletons” but yes that’s what I was referencing. This was about 20 years ago and I’m old now :) So you are correct: Counter Intelligence, Full Scope and Lifestyle. I conflated the term full scope poly with the Single scope that is a type of background check for an SCI billet.

        1. Database Developer Dude*

          No worries. I’m probably just as old as you are (57). I just had to take a CI poly for my current billet. My examiner had a voice for NPR. I refuse Lifestyle or Full Scope as a matter of principle.

          I heard they ask you stuff that while not illegal, is really none of anyone’s business.

    3. Irish Teacher.*

      Honestly, it’s the fact that I know they are nonsense that would have me sweating and possibly cause me to fail one. If I thought they were real science, I’d be less worried as I’d know I was telling the truth and had nothing to worry about but since I know they are more testing your nerves/reactions, I’d be nervous about being nervous (and given that I’ve been known to send blood pressure monitors off the charts because I stress myself out thinking “I mustn’t get stressed because if I do it will make the result inaccurate”…yeah).

      (Weirdly, or maybe not, my blood pressure tested as completely normal most of the times it was checked when I was in hospital recovering from an operation for thyroid cancer, presumably because I wasn’t focussed on it and wasn’t psyching myself up so much with the “you have to be calm here because you want this to be accurate and if you worry about getting worried, you’ll put it wrong.”)

      1. Media Monkey*

        cancer is weird tho. before my mum was confirmed with pancreatic cancer and when they thought she had some sort of infection, her blood pressure (which she took meds for) went normal for the first time in years (it was regularly checked for her meds)

  35. JSC*

    In my experience, lawyers are knowledgeable about law *in the area of law that they practice or specialize in.* With other areas of law, they know whatever they learned in one or two semesters of law school. Sometimes when they say “I’m a lawyer!!” it’s just a way to warn you off from trying to argue with them. Not a reliable statement of legal expertise let alone legal ethics.

    1. UKDancer*

      Agreed my best friend is married to an extremely good barrister in a particular niche aspect of law who is a leading expert in his field and has written books on it. Would I ask him to conveyance the sale of my house? Absolutely not because he’d be a terrible property solicitor.

      Different lawyers have different specialties.

      1. sheworkshardforthemoney*

        I bake and my specialty is cookies and I’ve created a few new ones over the years. Do not ask me to make a wedding cake because it would be bad enough to use as a warning about trusting your special cake to an amateur.

      2. Industry Behemoth*

        Yes. I worked in criminal defense law for a bit, and heard of an in which a court-appointed CD attorney was a real estate specialist with zero trial experience of any kind. Then he was given something like four weeks to prepare for a federal trial, when the government had taken almost 5 years just to charge the defendant.

        I remember thinking, ok the next time I buy a piece of real estate, I’ll hire the best criminal defense attorney I can to handle the closing.

  37. Bitte Meddler*

    Waaay back in 1987, I worked for a gift shop inside a mall. We were required to take a polygraph test as part of the standard hiring process and then, once again, when some damaged merchandise *that was slated to be thrown away* went missing.

    I got all excited for a minute when I read that the use of routine polygraphs in a business setting are illegal but then — womp-womp — looked up the year the law was passed. 1988.

    1. soontoberetired*

      back in the late 1960s my mom’s employer wanted all employees to take a lie detector test because money went missing. Mom was one of the book keepers and she knew she hadn’t taken any money, and refused to take it. Her refusal meant other people also refused. turns out a manager was skimming money out of the till and someone caught him red-handed.

      My mom was a pioneer in a few things – a year or so before that Sears wouldn’t let her buy a refrigerator without my dad saying it was okay. We never shopped at Sears again. All of the appliance business went to a local shop after that. She paid in cash, they took the money.

  38. Blue Mina*

    I’m not a huge Seinfeld fan, but the episode where Jerry’s girlfriend wants him to take a lie detector test to see if he watches Melrose Place is the one episode that always stuck in my memory. George’s advice to Jerry is pure sociopathic genius: “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”

    As everyone else has mentioned, lie detectors are worthless, and this whole scenario is completely insane.

  39. soontoberetired*

    back in the late 1960s my mom’s employer wanted all employees to take a lie detector test because money went missing. Mom was one of the book keepers and she knew she hadn’t taken any money, and refused to take it. Her refusal meant other people also refused. turns out a manager was skimming money out of the till and someone caught him red-handed.

    My mom was a pioneer in a few things – a year or so before that Sears wouldn’t let her buy a refrigerator without my dad saying it was okay. We never shopped at Sears again. All of the appliance business went to a local shop after that. She paid in cash, they took the money.

  40. pcake*

    Years ago, I was an assistant manager at a club where money had gone missing on a busy night ($25,000 in cash). The owner spent a fortune having every one take lie detector tests, and I was scared as there were thing I didn’t want to disclose and ran into those things during the test.

    While the guy giving the tests was very professional and pleasant, I considered this the worst work experience I’ve ever had. And while the test did disclose the thief indirectly (it was the other assistant manager, who had worked there for over 10 years in various capacities), he didn’t actually take the lie detector test. He disappeared the day of his test, never to return. Since only 3 of us had the keys to the safe, and both I and the GM had passed the test and besides, I knew neither of us took the money, I still can’t imagine why the servers and bartenders and doormen had to take the test as they didn’t have access to the safe, which wasn’t damaged or picked and was in clear view when everyone was at work, so it had to be done after hours.

  43. el l*

    What’s so hilarious to me about this is: There is absolutely no reason why a confession was necessary here. Our laws do not require that, employment practice does not require that. They could’ve just fired.

    There wasn’t even any reason to find any more proof. And if they did, “Oh, they failed a lie detector test, so they did the theft” was going to convince absolutely nobody. If they had some particular reason to worry about a discrimination claim, they could’ve brought in the police. But no.

    I think the company owner’s son heard them grousing, and offered his “services” as a solution.

    1. allathian*

      The receptionist was the only non-white employee and they were undoubtedly afraid of accusations of racism. Which is pure nonsense. Being a member of a protected class will only, in the best case scenario, protect you from being fired *for being a member of that protected class*. So a Black person can’t be fired for being Black but they can absolutely be fired for stealing.

  44. Inkognyto*

    This was a way (bad way) for the company to decide they wanted to make a ‘show of force’ of what happens when someone steals.

    A camera would have solved this much easier.

  47. niknik*

    > Employee Polygraph Protection Act

    With so little actual workers right in the US, this one is actually a thing ? That’s hilarious. Exploit people to your hearts content, but a lie detector ? That’s a step to far !

Comments are closed.