My "Civic Duty"

So I got a Jury summons in the mail. Josh called me after work one day and proceeded to, for the most part, bust my non-existent balls that I had been summoned while he has yet to be.

What I didn't divulge to him at the time was that there was a part of my that thought to myself: "cool!" I had never been summoned and the whole thing is rather interesting to me. After years of watching a bunch of cop and lawyer dramas, I always wondered what it was like in real life.

And FINALLY - I was going to get my chance - to play a real-life juror (potentially) in a real-life crime drama (albeit potentially boring/benign).

I have heard many rumors that the job is actually rather mundane and can be, at times, mind numbing... but here I was amped and ready to get my chance to be selected. Some sick part of me was probably getting off on the idea of "being selected".

So off I went - masking my enthusiasm - to perform my civic duty at the Tampa Courthouse.

Now what I find particularly compelling about Jury Duty is that seemingly NO ONE wants to participate. How is this possible!??! Why is it such a dreaded event? I happen to think its rather interesting that we have a society that applauds itself on a "jury of your peers". Yes, its inconvenient. Yes, its unpredictable. But its still pretty darn cool, if you ask me.

The Tampa Courthouse is, apparently, a newer building - and if its not new, they certainly take VERY good care of it and have a lot of pride in it. Not to say that I have been in many courthouses - maybe the "pride of ownerships" exists in all such establishments, but I would be hard pressed to believe that every courthouse is so nicely cared for. In fact, I would venture to say its one of the NICEST buildings I have been in since coming to Florida.

They gathered all of us in a "juror auditorium" and were shockingly pleasant. In the small handful of times I have had to communicate with city employees in my lifetime, I have never had such a positive experience. They were courteous, respectful, engaging, and even made jokes with us. The bailiffs were funny and pleasant and treated you with respect and patience.

By 9am, they began to call jurors and they moved swiftly. They had a definite plan, they knew what needed to happen, and they executed it.

I was called with the third group and made my way to the front of the room - excited and ready to go.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," the bailiff began, "we actually don't need you until 12:30. So, you are welcome to leave the building and go take care of local errands if you so choose - just be sure to be right back here, at this spot, at 12:30. We will call you if your case is cancelled and we don't need you to return."

Wow. Alright.

In the back of my mind I knew that they would never go to trial on my case, but I appreciated that they would call me - so off I went to kill some time.

I returned to the courthouse at 11:30 and read a book on my iPad to kill some more time.

At 1pm, I went up to the front desk and was greeted, pleasantly, by a woman behind the desk: "Hello! Do you need something?" I smiled sheepishly (yes, me - sheepishly) and asked her "did I miss something? I noticed that other members of my group were just called into jury selection but I was not. I hope I didn't miss something". She didn't hesitate and responded: "Well, you arrived late, so we skipped you".

I immediately felt sick to my stomach. HOW!? What did I miss!? Can I get in trouble for missing my name being called?

The woman instantly sensed that I was panicking and said "I'm just kidding. That never happened. Your trial was cancelled but I was at lunch when the decision went down. However, we have a few judges that may still need more jurors so we should know shortly if we will still be needing you." We laughed about her joke and i went to sit down with the 30-ish other people in the room which held about 200 earlier.

1 Completed book, 1 newspaper, 200 facebook updates, 4 text messages and 35,000 Jewel Blast points later - it was 4:30 and we were finally dismissed.

So I ran outta there.

But you wanna know what's weird? I would do it again - and I can't say that that would be true of my fellow waiters. It seemed that every single person I was sitting with would RATHER be stuck in that room for 8.5 hours than apparently be selected for a jury before noon. I don't get it. I really don't.

Are people really just that sheep-like that they are raised to hate jury duty and so they won't even give it a chance? Was I surrounded by veteran Jurors who had bad experiences and didn't want to repeat it?

Maybe I am just weird - who knows. What I do know is that the staff treated us with respect and integrity. They treated us like we were important to their process rather than like cattle who were required to be there under penalty of fines. I felt like I was a part of our due process and that I was being asked to play a part in fair and balanced trial.

And I didn't even leave the darn waiting room.