O Lucky Day!

Today was a day I wasn't looking forward to: reporting for jury duty. Like many states, New York has cut way, way back on the deferments which is good in that you end up serving a shorter amount of time. In the olden days, you had to serve a full two weeks unless you were assigned to a trial, so in those days you wanted to get on a trial since it might only last 3 or 4 days and you could be done.

So of course the overachiever in me shows up at 8:30 for the 9:00 start and I have to say I was stunned at how many people were late -- people were wandering in as late as 9:45. So we sat there for a while in this big jury pool room which probably holds about 150 people. I did a bit of work, but at about 10:30 we went into the courtroom and they picked 18 people at random to question. Of those they picked 6, and then we broke for lunch from 1 to 2. Same routine in the afternoon. Again, my name wasn't picked to be questioned in the jury box and so I just sat there. Then they sent us back to the jury room where we sat more. About 4:20, the jury woman announces that we're very lucky in that they were letting us go after one day and gave us certificates to prove we served and we can't be called again for six years. So if I disregard the pain to my butt (literally) from sitting on hard wooden benches/pews all day, jury duty was about as painless as it gets.