Yesterday, I had to fulfill one of my least favorite “civil duties”, serve on Jury Duty. One caveat, let me say that I do not fault anyone working at the court house or those offices.
Serving on or being called for Jury Duty is a bit of a struggle. I have a weird mix of OCD and ADHD. Imagine being a mix between Sheldon Cooper and Leonard Hoffsteader from Big Bang Theory.
I just cannot believe that the system has not made this more streamlined that it is. I kind of relate it to “herding cattle between pens”. The checking in process has been streamlined, which at first, had me hoping the remainder of the process would be better. I was mistaken.
Once there, they almost ever start on time. Once started, they go over the lists of “rules” for serving, like no researching the cases to s no posting selfies while serving.
Next comes, getting selected for panels. They will bring about 20–30 people into a court room to weed out potential jury members for the particular case. I think this is a punishment worse that waterboarding. They ask you to be honest with your answers. When you are, they attorneys and sometimes the lawyers give you the “stink eye”. For example, they told us the particular case would last three days and if that would be a problem. About 25% of the panelists had doctor or travel appointments scheduled within the timeframe. Heaven forbid, we “normal people”, have a life and cannot afford to stay for long cases.
This process, is really bad, for someone, like me, who has focus issues. Especially when some attorneys have a voice type similarly to Ben Stine from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. With 20–30 panelists, this makes for a long drawn out process.
Fortunately I did not get picked for the trial. However, because it was a middle of the week day of jury duty, it messed up my focus at my normal software development job for the remainder of the week.
