Falling over now

[jethrien]

I had jury duty today. (Very romantic.)

I'm off the hook and don't have to come back tomorrow, which is nice. But man, I'm wiped out. The benches have padding but are at 90 degree angles and are incredibly uncomfortable. I spent the entire thing reading technical articles from work until I felt like my eyes were bleeding. And if the guy the next bench over made one more comment about how ridiculous the $5/day we got paid was, I was going to leap the aisle and strangle him.

I'm going to go lie down and see if my back can sort itself out. Oww.

Comments

[fyrna.livejournal.com]

I'm confused. Jury duty involves sitting on a bench to read technical articles from work???

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Jury duty starts with sitting in a giant waiting room with 200 other people. They call groups of 50 or so at a time to a courtroom, where they continue to sit as they call individuals up one at a time to do voir dire until they fill the jury. If you don't get chosen, you get sent back to the giant waiting room. If you don't get called at all, you sit in the waiting room for an entire day and then they send you home. (They need to make sure they have way more people than they will need in the end, so when they disqualify jurors, they don't risk running out.)

I've done this three times now. The first time I made it as far as the court room but never got called up to the box. The two most recent times, I've never left the jury pool room.

So if you get called--bring a full day's worth of stuff to do. The one here has a limited number of outlets available if you're fast, and wi-fi, and a bookshelf and magazine rack. Some people talk to strangers. Some play cards. Some bring their laptops and blackberries and VPN in and have a full day's worth of work. Some read, or watch movies on their iPads or inadvertantly fall asleep on the really uncomfortable benches. As long as you go when you're called and you don't bother anyone, they don't really care what you do to pass the time.

[momerath4.livejournal.com]

That was my experience of jury duty in New York as well. Two days of sitting around reading and playing on my laptop, then they told us we didn't have to come back for the third day. And the whole time they only called people out for the voir dire once. I don't recall them having wi-fi back then, though (this must have been around 2002).

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I had four days of voir dire the last time I had jury duty. On the upside, San Luis Obispo County has a very low rate of sit around to no purpose.

That's a hell of a thing to do (http://pecunium.livejournal.com/185940.html?nc=19#comments)