malkav11

Jury duty, day 1:

Woke up nearly five hours earlier than usual, ate hurried breakfast of instant noodles (yakisoba, pretty good stuff really). Caught limited stop bus downtown - surprisingly fast trip. Goes from my area pretty much straight downtown with very few stops in between. Always nice.

Took a while to find the courthouse - the building I thought was the courthouse was actually the government center and the courthouse was a building I've passed many times without paying it the least bit of attention - looks like a standard office building from outside. (An old one.) Once in, I went through the metal detector, located the jury room, had my summons scanned to indicate my attendance, and was given a brief orientation as to the procedures and duties associated with my week of jury duty.

And then I sat, and I read. For hours. With one break for lunch (during which I also read, and which was not furnished as I'd expected.) I nearly finished a seven hundred page book before I was finally selected for empanelment for a criminal trial along with ~17-20 others. And then after I was sworn to answer any questions asked truthfully, they picked everyone but me and three other people to actually answer those questions and potentially be selected as jurors. I just sat there. Once they picked the jury (which never involved me at any point), the rest of us were sent back down to the jury room where we were scanned out and sent home with instructions to call in later this day for an automated message informing us when/whether to show up tomorrow.

I don't object to the notion of serving as a juror. I would in fact be proud to do my part to support our judicial system. But it seems really broken to disrupt my life and finances so that I can sit in a chair and read all day without accomplishing anything. Jury pay in this county is $20 per day attended, plus 27 cents per mile travel reimbursement (might or might not get that as a bus commuter, I'm not sure.). My employer will pay me for time missed due to jury duty - I do work for the county, after all - but apparently that's not universal. They'll take my $20 a day any days that they pay me my regular wages. And since they don't feed me, I am out any money spent feeding myself - which is, since I'm poor, a significant if not insurmountable drain on my finances.

At least I got out before 4:30, which was the projected time.

Edit (1/30/08):
Day 2:
9:00 start, which I managed despite stupidly missing my stop and having to hike a few blocks. Not all groups were called in, but mine was. Proceeded to sit around dozing and occasionally reading Liz Williams' Banner of Souls until a bit before noon, at which point they sent a bunch of us, me included, home. Nearly froze to death getting back, due to ferociously nasty winds out of the north.

Day 3:
9:00 start again. Finished Banner of Souls, watched a bunch of other people get sent home shortly before lunch. Ate at Subway again (it's right across the street from the courthouse). Came back, got through 4 story maps and two or three elimination maps in Metal Gear Acid 2 before being sent home a little after 3 pm. At no point during that entire time was anyone called up to be selected for a jury. And yet every group was required to come in. Something seems wrong with this picture.

(1/31/08):
Day 4:
Forgot my book this time, so I wound up rereading the first two Harper Hall of Pern books by Anne McCaffrey with the homebrew ebook reader Bookr on my PSP, then listening to podcasts on my iPod until I was finally released. This time they said I was done...at least for four years or so. Once again, nobody was called to a courtroom.