Is Denise Martin, fourth-place finisher in Survivor: China, a lunch lady? Is she a janitor? Is she a pawn of the "reality show" system? Or does the Massachusetts resident just have ladyballs as bold as her mullet?

Denise Martin admitted that she had been promoted before leaving for China on CBS' Early Show in an extremely awkward interview.

Apparently, a lot of people are visiting the site looking for more information on Denise the Lunch Lady (sorta). Let's recap: At the Survivor: China reunion show, she said the Douglas School District, where she said she was a lunch lady, wouldn't rehire her in that position and demoted her to janitor. Survivor producer Mark Burnett gave Denise $50,000.

The next day, after a wave of bad publicity, the superintendent of the Douglas School District said that Denise lied and that she was given a promotion to janitor, which paid more per hour than the lunch-lady position. The promotion also happened before she left for China. When superintendent Nancy Lane said that the district did "everything possible" to make sure Denise could keep her job and do Survivor, Denise looked like a heel.

More thoughts on why Denise might have lied after the jump. Screengrab from CBS of an uncomfortable-looking Denise in the middle of a Julie Chen grilling. A few changes and, unfortunately, that could be a mugshot.

It would be difficult to burrow inside that mullet and figure out what the hell she was thinking. If she still has a job, she might not want to return because her peers and everyone else in Douglas will give her a hard time. And, if she was that savvy to whip up such a pity-inducing story out of thin air, then why didn't she show more of those skills while she was in the game? She had plenty of opportunity to win the game, especially if she had joined another alliance, particularly the one led by Peih-Gee.

Or, perhaps she--and the producers--bought into her "poor lunch lady" story so much that they let themselves get carried away. The Survivor reunion show and the Early Show interview indicate that Denise didn't like being a janitor, didn't like being away from her family, and wanted her old job, and so a little bit of truth spun out of control.

Bostonist has sat in on auditions and interviewed reality-show contestants, and the theme of the intensity of the experience always comes up. It's not reality as much as an alternate universe. The producers saw a great story in Denise and ran with it, and perhaps she never bothered to remind them of a little thing known as reality.