Jury Duty. Some Things Don't Change

Well this week I was on standby for jury duty. It's the same sort of thing as before, where you call in on day and their recording tells you to call in other day, which you do, and are then told to call in another day, and so forth until you've made phone calls at least once every day for a week.

This time, though, I actually got called in - in the middle of the day. I had only been called in once, years and years ago. But on Tuesday I got to leave work at noon and go downtown to the courthouse. I tell you, not much has changed. The building is the same, the setup is the same. It is nice that they have TV's mounted which play the big Disney blockbusters from 2 or 3 years ago. But other than that, it's the same deal.

I ended up waiting for two and a half hours while I read through my graduate music history notes and scores. Two separate panels were called over to different courtrooms during that time, but I was not picked in the lottery. So, at about 3:30pm, we were told we could go home and that our service was completed - for the next 18 months anyway.

So I went to the Super WalMart and did some grocery shopping, and still got home before I would have if I had been at work all day.

It almost seems like a waste of time to have someone go to all the trouble of getting off work and have them do all the paperwork that goes along with a summons and the surveys you fill out when your there, to then only be there for less than 3 hours with nothing to show for it. I almost wish I had been pulled onto a panel, then at least there would have been something interesting to do.