Employer makes workers take fake lie detector tests to trap a thief — turns out, it's actually illegal

Employer-employee relationships are complex. Oftentimes, the relationship becomes so imbalanced that one party takes all the control. At that time, the situation becomes so overwhelming that the employees don't realize that the actions happening to them are illegal. This is what happened with one person and her colleagues, as recounted by writer Alison Green on her blog, when their boss started an investigation to capture a thief. (Green shared the incident on Ask a Manager.)

The reader who sent in the incident, and a coworker named Kate, used to be employed together at the same company some years ago. Both worked in different positions — the former was a manager while Kate was answerable to another manager. During their time at the company, a bunch of cash payments started disappearing. The company claimed that the loss amounted to several thousand dollars. An internal investigation alleged that the cash was being stolen by a front desk receptionist. The managers were all pulled together for a meeting where this theft was discussed. 

One of the company owners, who was an attorney, proposed that he bring on his son, a former police officer, and give every employee a lie detector test. The aim was to catch the receptionist lying, and thereafter, give her the appropriate punishment. "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," it was mentioned on the blog. The manager (who sent in the story) was a little taken aback by the decision. While the lie detector test was being arranged, the receptionist continued working. 

The manager believed that the easier thing to do would be to let the receptionist go and couldn't understand why this easy decision was not taken. Moreover, during the lie detector test, the manager wasn't hooked up to the machine (because they were a manager). They also thought this was what happened to everyone else apart from the suspect. But their conversation with Kate revealed an entirely different story. Kate told them that her manager had pulled the whole team together and informed them that the money had gone missing. They were not told about the suspect and instead were just informed that they would have to undergo the test.

Kate was hooked to the machine and made to go through the whole procedure. The whole process was nerve-wracking for her. "She said she was so nervous, she threw up before her appointed time, cried all the way home afterward, and spent the weekend sure she was going to lose her job, or worse … for something she didn’t do," Green explained on the blog. The following Monday after the test, the receptionist was finally let go. The mindblowing thing was that she had passed the test, but still, management took the call to fire her because their suspicion was strong enough to do so. 

After a gap of some years, the pair revisited the incident and couldn't help but think that the whole turn of events was unnecessary. Moreover, they now also questioned the legality of it, and if it was in murky territory, then how did an attorney let the test facilitate? In response to this whole incident, Green gave an answer to the person's queries, which confirmed their doubts: "Under the federal Employee Polygraph Protection Act, it’s illegal for nearly all private employers to require employees to take lie detector tests." The writer further claimed that an employer can use the test, but only on a solid suspect which in this case was the receptionist. The site added that "the test would have needed to be administered by a certified and bonded polygraph examiner with a valid license." The employer did not have the legal right to make their employees go through such a dissatisfactory experience.