My Civic Duty

After twelve years of living in San Francisco, I was finally called upon to pay my dues.  I had been summoned for jury duty.  And deep down I was kind of excited!  I mean, when else would I be able to see the inner workings of our judicial system and see what I had missed by not becoming lawyer?

In San Francisco, you are required to call in each afternoon to determine if you are required to show up the following day. Each evening, at promptly four pm, I called in to see if I had been chosen.  And Tuesday night, I was given the news, my services were needed that Wednesday morning.  I was finally going.

I showed up early, prepared with a good book to read (the small novella Infinite Jest) and found a good location to soak in the experience.  Don’t’ get me wrong, while I was excited on the inside, I played it cool externally, not wanting to come off over eager or mentally unwell.  I acted busy/important, rolled my eyes at the authority, controlled my voice level when called for role and only half paid attention (ok I was all ears) to both the informational videos and various announcements.

One hour in, my dreams of going through jury selection were put to the test, the trial was expected to last 6-7 weeks!  And while I know I am replaceable at work, being gone for that long was just not an option.  So based on the judges guidance, I followed approximately 50% of the potential jurors to an adjoining room to claim a “hardship” and hopefully be excused from the process.   In order to claim a hardship, we had to complete a questionnaire for the judge to review and apparently I qualified.   I was devastated and relived at the same time.   I didn’t get a chance to participate in the Beauty Pageant question round where I could demonstrate that I would have been the best impartial juror ever (I would have nailed it), nor did I  get the chance to show case my debate skills ala 12 Angry Men in the deliberation room.  Instead, I left the process torn between my inner dork being passed over in picking teams at dodge all and the relief of not having to work two jobs for 6 to 7 weeks.

In the end, my jury duty was deferred, so I get another chance and in the meantime, and I happily collected my $17 for my day of service.