Chapter 8: Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

I could probably get in some trouble for saying this, but I work at a place that requires us all to have security clearances. A select few of us, if we are working on a more sensitive project, require a Top Secret clearance in order to be allowed access to the information and materials involved.

I'm happy to say that I am not in the situation of needing such a clearance, as all of the projects that I have worked on to date have not been classified as such. It's not that I don't enjoy that type of work or the prospect of doing something really neat, but it's that damn lie-detector test that you have to take in order to get your TS clearance.

Now, I really don't have anything of significance to hide. I've led a pretty uneventful life in terms of things that they would care about on a polygraph test. But the premise of being hooked up to one of those machines, with all of the tubes and wires coming off of you, while sweating your balls off and being interrogated about your background.... I'd confess to just about anything if it meant not failing the exam.

But never in a million years would I expect to hear the exam proctor ask me, "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Guess who got a phone call to come in and take their polygraph exam. Now guess who got asked that very question.

It came to be that somehow, some way, Spam Boy got tapped to work on a TS project and required the mandatory background investigation and polygraph test that goes along with it. Despite what I've written about him to this point, about him being absolutely nuts, he's still a regular ol' law-abiding citizen.

I mean, unless it's somehow illegal to eat about 100 consecutive meals at Subway or attend Polish Debutante balls.

But seriously, this guy was clean. Going into the polygraph exam, he should have had very little to worry about, unless you count the generic "fear of God" that can be put into you by the tester.

Now from this point on in the story, I'm depending solely on Spam Boy's recollection of what transpired. I have no evidence of any of this (man, I wish I could snag a transcript), except that he told me this story directly, and what happened afterwards seemed to corroborate it.

I guess there came a time in the polygraph exam where the examiner asked SB if he had ever been involved in any illegal activity. I have a hard time believing they would ask such an open-ended question, but since I've never done one of these myself, I have not choice but to believe it. After originally responding with a "no, ma'am", she decided to put the pressure on him a bit.

"You're hiding something.", she said.

"No.", he replied.

"I can tell. It seems like you're holding something back."

"Okay, okay, fine... I emulate Nintendo games on my PC."

"What?!"

"Yeah, I've got it set up so that I can play Nintendo games on my PC."

"I don't care about that. Is that all?"

"Yes."

Hilarious. If you read "Chapter 3: Emulation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery", you know how funny his whole history of emulating Sonic the Hedgehog on his computer was. Having to confess it to a polygraph examiner? That's high comedy.

But it gets better.

Later on in the examination, Spam Boy was becoming more and more uncomfortable with the polygraph set up. Maybe the tubes or the wiring were connected too tight, or maybe the length of the affiar was starting to wear him out, but for whatever reason, SB starting getting pale.

"I don't feel so good.", he said.

"What's the matter?"

"I can't feel my arm."

"What? Just try to relax."

"Seriously, I don't know what's happening to me."

"You look white as a ghost."

"I think something's wrong."

"What the hell's the matter with you?"

And that's when the exam reached epic proportions. When the proctor has to stop the procedure, disconnect you from all of the equipment, and ask you what the hell is the matter with you, it's typically not a good sign. The fortunate part is that it's expected that you might fail an exam or two prior to actually passing. I imagine they must realize how stressful it is to take such an exam, even if you don't have a checkered past. So when you do fail, they simply schedule another appointment with you, and you come in and do it again.

I tried to calm SB down with that very thought.

"Well, they'll just call you up and you'll do it again."

He got a call that very day. It was Tuesday, and he had just failed for the first time the day before, on Monday. I guess they were in a rush to expedite his clearance (not sure why), so they left him a message on his voice mail asking if he could come back that coming Friday.

The other issue at play here is that the exams were being performed on the other side of the state, in the Boston area. In order to accomodate an early-morning exam, he had to go out there and stay in a hotel the night before. Now they were asking him to do it again the same week. This was surely going to put a crimp in his work time for the week, as well as the initial money out of pocket to pay for another hotel room.

After thinking this over, he decided to return the examiner's phone call.

While he didn't get her in person, he was able to leave her a message on her cell phone. I could hear it from my cubicle. It went something like this:

"Hello, this is Andy Wolan returning your call. I don't think I'll be able to do it on Friday morning, but what about Thursday at around 6pm? Call me back and let me know what you think. Thanks. Bye."

Surely, I had to address this time change with him.

"Did you seriously just ask her to do it at dinner time on Thursday? What do you think she's going to say to that?"

And then playing to his fear of well, just about everything....

"What if she thinks you're asking her out on a date?"

"No! Really?"

"Yeah, I mean, you did set it up for dinner time on Thursday. I hope she doesn't get the wrong idea."

"I'll call her back."

So he gave her another call and told her that he couldn't do Friday and could they please schedule another time. This time, he left out the reference to Thursday night.

She came back with, "It has to be this Friday or not at all. I'm terribly busy and we need to get this done."

So, when Spam Boy didn't show up on Friday for the exam, he was promptly denied clearance and became the first person that we know of to outright get denied due to a failed exam.

Figures.