Last night we went out for dinner with friends including one friend down from Joburg dealing with a family-related issue. Despite the unpleasant circumstances surrounding her visit, it was lovely to see her again and it was a good evening.

It was a good evening featuring a rather disconcerting toilet seat. The toilet seat appeared to be made of some sort of transparent perspex, but set into the perspex were various pieces of pasta in different shapes and colours, and also what appeared to be four huge cockroaches, which were, fortunately, the thingies that the toilet seat rest on when it's down.

A quick surf revealed that designer toilet seats are big business. I think the correct term for "some sort of transparent perspex" may by "poly resin." I have never known, in such a sentence, whether the full stop is supposed to go inside or outside the quotation marks.

The place where am I working does not have interesting toilet seats. It does however, pursue interesting relationships between management and staff. All IT staff, including humble contractors, are suddenly required to take part in a polygraph test.

When I think of a polygraph test (but why not call a spade a lie detector test) I think of the following sequence of events:

1. do something wrong
2. get caught
3. deny it
4. have polygraph test
5. get locked up

Not in this case, because this is a pro-active risk management measure required to ensure against breach of contract with the company's client and protect the wellbeing of the company's client's customers. (This is almost a direct quote.)

It has been very interesting at work over the last couple of days, since Friday afternoon when this was sprung on the staff. There is a huge amount of bad feeling and resentment. The polygraph examiner is apparently abrasive, aggressive and generally nasty causing those who have already submitted to the test to come out 'feeling like criminals'.

Despite a certain amount of scientific curiosity about the process, I am pretty unkeen to do it. At the moment I am just telling them I have not been given permission by my company to take part, which is more or less true. My position is not at stake, after all, although my contract working with them may be.