Word: detector
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...workers accidentally triggered a smoke detector in Widener Library yesterday, the latest in a series of recent incidents that have forced Cambridge firemen to evacuate the building...
...Linda Voikos, then 22, a bookkeeper for S.S. Kresge, began when she reported $150 missing from the previous day's receipts. A few weeks later the store's security man took her to a room at a local Holiday Inn. There another man with a lie detector tried to elicit a confession from Voikos, first with his equipment and then with persuasion: "Linda, you've tried to deceive me. You did steal the money." The bookkeeper, a six-year employee, quit before she could be fired. Traumatized by the incident, she spent much of the next...
...overreaction? Perhaps; but last year a Detroit jury found Voikos' story so convincing that it ordered the discount chain to pay her $100,000. The hefty compensation was unprecedented, but there is growing evidence that Voikos' ordeal was not. Lie detector tests, either to screen job applicants or to uncover theft by employees, have become big business: hundreds of thousands are given each year, and the number is rising steadily. But despite technical improvements in the equipment, the accuracy of the results is often open to question, and there are persistent reports of browbeating by examiners. One supermarket...
...might make that exclamation about the novel itself. First the riches. The book is full of De Vries' happy wordplay, metaphysical Wiffle Balls, witty oxymorons (Peachum describes himself as a "self-pitying stoic") and perversely amusing ironies (a house burns down because of faulty wiring in a smoke detector). There are also the author's ticklish ways with the jargon of three generations, throwaway lines ("A writer is Like his pencil. He must be worn down to be kept sharp"), and a dandy piece of burlesque when Peachum tries to undress Officer d'Amboise in her patrol...
Everything was back to normal ten minutes after the alarm sounded, Dougherty said. Personnel had smoked in the lounge for three years without incident, he added. Dougherty said the firemen, who cleaned and readjusted the detector for higher smoke tolerance, told him the device malfunctioned...