Today I had a summons to attend my civic service of jury duty today. I was starting to dread it because, the last time I had Jury duty was some time between 2001 and 2004. However, back then I was called immediately to serve on a coroner's jury and had little time to wait. Now things have changed significantly. I'm not in school any more, I am heavily dependent on technology and I eat a snack or something every 2-3 hours.
Now they do not let you have any food in the court house, no technology can come into the court house, and I have things that need to get done, reports that need to be written and all that fun stuff. However, I learned some things today that will help me in the future.
1. When you leave the house in the morning to drop your child off at daycare, and you see a spider. Don't think the spider will wait in that spot for when you get back for you to kill it. Now I have a random baby big spider living somewhere in my house and I don't know where.
2. When you are driving the way your GPS told you to go and you see road construction ahead, MAKE A U-TURN. Or else you will sit in line waiting to get through the one lane street all losing your time to get to the court house on time.
3. When every piece of paper you received from the county states NO CELL PHONES and there are multiple signs that say the same thing on the way into the court house, and you really feel the need to break the rules, put your phone on silent. Some guy kept his phone and it went off in front of the sheriff and bluff today, I thought the man was going to jail the way they looked at him. Gutsy that's for sure.
4. If you get called for jury duty make sure you live in some small town, chances of actually making the jury small, big cities like Chicago, you could end up on the Blogo case and be board to tears.
5. Read your summons carefully, when you see $11.00 per/ don't stop reading. When you think that is $11.00 per hour you are sorely disappointed when it comes down to $11.00 a day with $0.30 per mile that you traveled. And I'm sure that money will be taxed. I made about $17.00 today before taxes. That was worth the day off work that I had.
6. When they ask the 5 million questions to find out a little about everyone in the room, PLEASE answer yes/no/ or another one word answer that best gets to the question asked. Can I tell you this one man stood up for almost EVERY question asked and shared his entire life history which included many run ins with the law or legal system. He wasn't on trial and I was willing to send him to jail, for what I'm not real sure.
7. Don't do anything stupid in your life, you will have to confess to it in front of a large group of people on reasons why you committed a crime. I counted 3 DUI's in our room 2 under age drinkers and my buddy that wouldn't shut up had something too.
8. Dental work scheduled for tomorrow is not a good reason to get out of jury duty. Sit down.
9. Being almost 100% deaf and about 110 years old, a good reason for not serving on a jury.
10. If you never want to serve on a jury make friends with the states attorneys and be sure to call them all by there first name. The defence does not like that.
11. Eat a big breakfast because all you get once you are there is water from the water fountain.
12. If you really have a beef with the justice system don't make up stupid excuses for why you should not be on the jury that will last for 2 days. "Well if I don't get home to water my plants I will starve."
It has been anywhere from 6-9 years since I was called for Jury Duty. Last time I got to play CSI detective and work with some cool people who enjoyed serving on a jury. This time I got to sit in a court room listening to people practically beg not to be called for Duty and just cross my fingers hoping that I would be able to go back to work the next day and not need to stay longer than that.
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