I'm a soon-to-be college grad who made the fatal mistake last year of applying for a summer internship with a government agency. While everyone else who interviewed me was friendly, nice, professional (and even the polygrapher was not quite as demon-posessed as some of the horror stories on this website!) the polygraph experience was literally the worst day of my life. 

I should start by saying that I have an extremely sensitive conscience to begin with. I was falsely accused of stealing a candy bar in jr. high and could barely even look at anyone afterwards. I felt as though I had actually done it, and no one ever believed me when I said that I was innocent.

At the time, I had no idea what kind of trickery and deception goes into the polygraph thing. I wrongly believed that it was in my best interest to be as candid as possible. When he told me the polygraph could tell that I was lying about which number I had written down, I thought to myself that that couldn't possible be true! But he told me, soberly, "IT KNOWS." One of the things I found most offensive now that I know in retrospect was that he lied to me when he told me that it was obious to him that I don't like to lie and that my parents had taught me well. In the back of my mind, I find of thought perhaps he was just saying that to make me nervous, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt and found it hard to believe that someone testing me to see if I was honest was actually lying to me!!

He gave me the typical lecture about how they are looking for upstanding people who don't cheat, lie, etc. and anyone who does those kinds of things is not worthy of them. His trick control questions were if I had ever cheated in school and if I had ever betrayed a friend. I could honestly answer that I had not cheated in school. I was home-schooled up until college and since then have not even been TEMPTED to cheat! I couldn't think of a time when I'd ever betrayed a friend before, either. In short, I did not feel the least bit guilty about those questions. I had no reason to! Little did I know, that was all a trick.

However, I did feel guilty about my application. The application had asked me tons of information that I didn't know for sure, including the names of every foreign person I ever chatted with online. Now, I didn't even know these people's complete names (especially since in some countries people have 2 last names or a last name and a patronym) -- only the names that their email addresses were registered as -- and so I just put down all the information I knew and assumed that if they had any problems with my application they would let me know. Compound that with the fact that these were people I didn't know hardly at all and had no idea how I would have gone about probing them for their addresses and dates and places of birth, which the agency also wanted, but told me that if I didn't know they could just see if my application was rejected.

When the polygrapher soberly informed me that I didn't do very well and asked me if I wanted to change any of my answers, I did what I thought was the right thing to do -- spilled my guts about all my guilt feelings about the application. When I told him I felt guilty because the application had asked things I didn't know for sure, he told me that that shouldn't make me feel guilty and so he gave me the test again. (Who's to say what "should" and "shouldn't" make people feel guilty? Some people are neurotic and OCD and feel guilty that they're not feeling guilty about anything!) I failed. 

Reading others' stories reveals to me how naive I was. The blood pressure thing really hurt and my arm was purple, but (silly me) I assumed that they had it all under control and knew what they were doing and wouldn't do anything to harm me. Ha! Now knowing that they lied to me, I feel extremely hurt. To make matters worse, for some reason HQ was not informed for a month following my disqualification and continued to contact all my friends, neighbors, professors, and bosses who I had to deal with the embarrassment of telling that I was "no longer applying for that job" and trying not to say why.

To be fair to the polygrapher, he did admit that it was not a perfect science and that he couldn't read my mind. If only they would stop deceiving people and accusing them of being liars! I am afraid of my future employability. Right now I am applying for a daycare and had to be fingerprinting and get a national criminal background check; I'm afraid that my employers are going to find out about the polygraph and rescind their employment offer because I seem like a criminal! I've volunteered with them and they really like me, and I would be SO ashamed if they had to reject me because of the polygraph! Is this something I should be worried about, and if so, what can I do about it? It will take a week for them to get the results of my background check and I'm terrified.