Impulse

I love jury duty! I’m here in the King County Regional Justice Center (sounds bet­ter than “cour­t­house”, no? I’m sure they did a focus group on it) with my fel­low cit­i­zens await­ing jury selec­tion. We’re a bit like cat­tle, really: each of us sports a bar­coded tag; we’re packed in a room just tightly enough to avoid a stam­pede, qui­etly moo­ing in the polite con­ver­sa­tion of strangers, and we’re given paci­fy­ing food in the form of movies and free wire­less (700kb both ways by my mea­sure — not bad for local gov­ern­ment. I’m beam­ing with civic pride).

This is my sixth jury cat­tle call, yet I’ve never actu­ally got­ten on a trial. The clos­est I ever got was the first round of voir dire on a case that was later moved to non-jury trial dur­ing lunch. Afterwards, the saint of a clerk gath­ered us in the hall­way and in a hushed voice told us, “Technically, I should bring you back for another trial, but it’s 3pm, so I’m going to let you all go home” (may she find hap­i­ness to the end of her days). Most of the time, I just use the wait­ing time to catch up on things. One time, I brought about three years of finan­cial records and spent the day enter­ing every­thing into the com­puter and bal­lanc­ing all the accounts. It’s easy to be pro­duc­tive when you’ve got noth­ing bet­ter to do.
Still, I’ve never been in a jury box. I guess that means I’m due.
I’m always amused by the call for jury selec­tion. All day, peo­ple have been milling about, talk­ing to each other, pound­ing on lap­tops, read­ing books, etc. A voice calls from above and all is silent. The Voice of Duty begins call­ing names. The ten­sion in the room soars. I look around, but every­one avoids eye con­tact. People look wor­ried; even guilty for some rea­son. The Voice con­tin­ues. We sit, anx­iously await­ing our doom, pray­ing that the next name will not be ours, know­ing it will be, then being sur­prised when it’s not.
The Voice pauses. People glance around in con­fu­sion. We know they’re call­ing 35, yet only 15 have been called. Why did they stop? Did they change their mind? Am I off the hook? Or is some sadis­tic clerk, who proudly checked the Control Freak box on their job appli­ca­tion, just toy­ing with us?
The Voice con­tin­ues. It speaks slowly and clearly, choos­ing phrases that can­not be mis­taken. “David Smith, you are num­ber thirty two.” Finally, the Voice announces the last name and the room enthu­si­as­ti­cally returns to killing time.
I won­der if this is what it’s like before we were born…
Wait! The Voice of is speak­ing… We’ve just been given a 20 minute break. Wow, good thing too! This loung­ing for a whop­ping hour is gru­elling. I feel tired already. It’s about time we got a break.
I’ve gotta get me a gov­ern­ment job.
Gee, can you tell I’m read­ing a Dave Eggers book?

Related posts:

1. Dodged another jury duty bullet