I’ve spent the last week anxiously awaiting a call for Federal jury duty — I got the summons a few weeks ago, and Monday was when I was supposed to report, but a phone call told me to wait until Thursday, when I was told to wait until next week… meanwhile, I’m frantically trying to get out a bunch of late magazines, all the while not knowing if I would be in the office the next day to finish up.
I’m a very civic-minded person most of the time, seeing as how I work for an organization that promotes active citizenship, you’d expect it. When I first got the summons I was somewhat intrigued. I’d only been called for jury duty once before, and that was in Washington, DC, where I sat all day in a jury pool room and was never called. This time, it’s for the Federal Court House in Alexandria where the big flashy terrorism trials happen and all that, so I’m a little more trepidacious — what if I eventually get called in only to find that I have to serve for months on some drawn-out Federal case? The interruption to my life and my work is already annoying, and I haven’t even been in the courthouse yet. I can now understand why so many people groan when they get the summons to jury duty.
I’ve been zipping through design and production of the various magazines I do to get them out before I get called, hopefully I’ll make it before it’s too late…
All this is by way of apologizing for not keeping up my quota of continual complaining here on the blog. Sorry.
I sympathize. When I was called for federal jury duty (two years ago, I think it was), they had a lengthy “voir dire” process where they made us fill out a lengthy questionnaire covering our exposure to and views on various topics (which I assume were relevant to the case), and then they called us back weeks later to question us orally on our responses. I was petrified. It all turned out rather simply, though: it was a drug and murder case, in which the death penalty could have been applied, and when I made it clear that I would not be able to support the death penalty in any circumstance, they excused me. Whew.