I guess it’s not so much a test I perform but a signal I listen for. However my attitude toward lying is probably a bit different from most people. It’s a major red flag for me, and usually, people are completely unaware they’re waving it. Even if it’s something relatively inconsequential, when I see someone effortlessly lying to another person, I assume they’d do the same to me. The fact that they’re so oblivious to it, not even trying to hide it, just strengthens the impression that lying is normal for them. This applies to many, if not most white lies as well.

The first thing that came to my mind was car repair.

This one wasn’t one purpose. I went to a shop for an oil change and 10,000 point inspection or whatever they called it. I knew one of my headlight bulbs went out a week before, but when I got the inspection report, it said everything was fine. I went to the shop manager and asked him to confirm that the mechanic had checked everything on the report. I didn’t blame him for the oversight, but he was kind of a dick when I pointed it out and had him do everything again until they found the problem.

Also, my dad always wrote the date on his air filters when he put them in because mechanics would often keep a dirty one laying around just to show it to customers and tell them that it was their filter and it needed replaced. He always got a kick out of calling them out on that kind of bullshit.

I use this VH trick at work occasionally for fun just to see if anyone reads my service report. “Your boilers are about to fail in the middle of winter but don’t worry I sprinkled pixie dust on them and did a rain dance”. Never heard from anyone not even my boss. One customer I used to write “Does anyone ever read these? If so call me at (phone number)”. I handed it to the man in charge, he pretended to read it, signed it and handed it back to me. The only one my boss called about was the one I wrote that simply said “I took a shit in the floor drain here”

It’s a good test when working with people that you don’t know, contractors, etc. In the automotive industry we work with a lot of electronic system suppliers and they deliver embedded software in the form of ECU. Software in this form can hide a multitude of horrors so the only way to keep track of it is to make release declarations, implying testing has been carried out. If that’s not present, you can’t trust it.

I used to work in serious sim. Think using game engines for realistic combat stimulation and training by the army. Systems had to interact and had different jobs rts, fps, driving simulator, etc.

So they each needed a unit database that was unique to that system. They also usually had a two versions a classified database and a less accurate non classified database.

A quick way to test was there was a unit type that was always set to invulnerable in unclassified databases. So drop one in the sim and drop some artillery on it. If it wasn’t destroyed you were unclassified.

Everytime with a project when you ask a document that says what has been agreed with the customer and the estimate for a planning and they look at you like a deer in the headlights to then forward a document from the sales guy that just says “we’ll do everything” and a phone book sized map with “a few additional demands from the customer.” Yeah, that project is auditioning for a role as the Hindenburg.

Including links to progress pictures and files associated with my drawings on my Internet Archive profile in the description. Formerly I used Imgur to post progress pictures, but migrated to Internet Archive after I learned that Imgur implemented an expiration policy. When people in the comments accuse my work of being AI-generated, it shows that people aren’t reading the description.

I work in the event industry as a production manager, I get to write these things.

As is typical when you have a large crew there will be dietary restrictions, some of them can be deadly. So before me or any of my crew starts unloading the truck I need to have a cold Dr. Pepper in my hand. If I don’t, we doordash, we do not eat the food provided.

In a former job, I developed “software” (I clicked together some LabVIEW…) for custom designed scientific experiments, which many other researchers (mostly PhD students) would use. Wrote detailed SOPs for their usage, because everything was wonky and in constant evolution, and in some circumstances, data generated could be wrong. So I put a toggle switch with some cryptic acronym on the panel which was told to be flipped in the SOP when users reached the part where following instructions was really critical. The toggle switch did nothing but to log time and date and what user was logged in. When discussing weird data later on, first thing I did was to check whether that log existed, and if not heavily scrutinized the data with respect to errors that could be induced by not following the SOP.

I say howdy to gauge people’s initial reaction when I first meet them. Their reaction to the corny and outdated term is telling about their mental picture of the world. It is the only time I use the word.

I work in live production, and have actually encountered the Brown M&M’s clause in real life. It was a small 5 person band. We had the show’s producer sitting backstage, picking brown M&M’s out of the fishbowl for probably 45 minutes.

They showed up for sound check, and immediately went “holy shit you guys actually pulled out the brown ones? We added that as a joke!” The producer was in earshot, and I got to watch him take psychic damage in realtime.

I leave a statement in each version of my resume, and see if a recruiter mentions it. It’s like “ask me about the western 5-legged salamander and how it’s linked to the Olympics” (hint: 5 rings) or something equally absurd but a little more relevant.

If they say the line, then I know they read it. If I ask, “so, did you catch the Olympics?”, and they still don’t pick up on it, they’re judged.

I don’t have photos of myself on the internet and do not participate in group photos. If I see a photo of myself online I know, for a fact, that the person who posted it does not respect my privacy, therefore they do not respect me. I will not trust them with any information about myself and others and in general will cut them out of my life if at all possible. Because of this I don’t have people who violate boundaries they don’t share, so if I said “Actually, I think I may be a woman” or “I have been thinking about leaving the country” they would not immediately judge or try to prevent my doing so, they would let me be and respect my needs. Also because of this I am much more comfortable working on things with these people to make life better and to invest in their wellbeing.

I go to peoples’ homes as a part of my job, and it’s often remarked that how messy someone’s home is seems to correspond to how their life and state of being fares overall.

This is gonna be controversial.

When I find out someone is a Christian, I ask them about their favourite part of the sermon on the mount. If they don’t know it, they’re ‘cultural Christians’ who’ve never opened a bible. If they’re familiar with the sermon, it means they do the work. The sermon on the mount is the section of the bible where Jesus explained to people what values they should hold and how they should behave in order to call themselves his followers.

I’m an ex-Christian and so are a lot of people who just don’t know it yet.