Many years ago, at the age of nineteen, I was forced to take a polygraph if I wanted to keep my job. Someone was stealing products from the store, we heard out the back door, and they required everyone to be tested.
Naturally, my co-workers and I discussed this among ourselves and we all agreed to test, we knew we were innocent. One of the men said all they're trying to do is see if anyone cracks under the pressure of the test. Being kind of a nervous type of person, I was concerned they might misread my domineer. I talked to my sister and she told me to try my best to control my breathing during the test.
For me the problem wasn't that I was guilty, it was they would think I was guilty. We all passed the test and went back to work, later it was revealed the thief was someone on another shift. Or were they just nervous?
I only post the correction because it took me a couple of minutes to figure out. Domineer is an uncommon word, so initially I thought I had a gap in my vocabulary, but couldn't find any definitions that made sense in this context.
When I was in high school, I had a similar experience at the place I worked. The manager had money missing from her purse, and someone (the actual thief, I assume) said they saw me take it.
On my own volition and expense, I took a polygraph test about it. On one of the control questions, I kept reacting in a manner the examiner said indicated untruthfulness. I was certainly being truthful, though. No matter how he reworded the question, I failed it.
Fortunately, it wasn't the "payload" questions. He swapped that control question out for a different one and declared me truthful. I presented the results to my manager at the same time as I quit.
That experience, though, got me very interested in polygraph examinations and started a hobbyist interest in the entire field and history of lie detection.
That led to me understanding that it's not a thing that is (currently, anyway) actually possible. What is done instead are psychological tricks that very much depend on the examinee believing that the whole thing is legitimate.
A LOT of businesses break labor laws on a regular basis, especially smaller businesses without a legal department telling managers "You can't do that".
You'd be alarmed to know how many restaurant owners tell the staff to clock out when the store closes and then finish closing duties off the clock, among other types of wage theft.
Naturally, my co-workers and I discussed this among ourselves and we all agreed to test, we knew we were innocent. One of the men said all they're trying to do is see if anyone cracks under the pressure of the test. Being kind of a nervous type of person, I was concerned they might misread my domineer. I talked to my sister and she told me to try my best to control my breathing during the test.
For me the problem wasn't that I was guilty, it was they would think I was guilty. We all passed the test and went back to work, later it was revealed the thief was someone on another shift. Or were they just nervous?