Jury Duty

I recently had a full blown tantrum at work about the uselessness of juries that could rival my 19-month-old son's outburst regarding vegetables.

If you've been on a jury before, I'm sure you felt important and maybe you were to that case, but most jurors probably don't care or want to be there to do their civic duty.

Parking is a nightmare (I'd be going to downtown Toledo) and the pay is lousy. The restrictions are also difficult to overcome. Depending on the case, you can't have a strong opinion about anything and if you do, you're ousted from the jury. I suppose that's a good thing, but how does it work exactly if it's supposed to be a jury of your peers?

The inner city drug dealer goes on trial and I doubt most of his jurors grew up in a neighborhood where drugs were rampant and somehow presented as a way to survive the daily challenges. His "peers" are probably the people who grew up in the suburbs and only saw the problems on the news while they were sitting around the table eating a home cooked meal.

And what about the doctor who finds himself in the hot seat? Considering being a professional, or so the paperwork for jury duty says, is a reason to get out of jury duty, I'm thinking he's not going to get a group of peers, either.

So I don't like the idea of juries. I don't like it and I never will and my rant at work was much more long winded and annoying than this one.

But Karma has a way of kicking you when you're down. I recently received my jury summons in the mail. *sigh*

I'm thinking of telling them if I have to report exactly what I think of the jury system. If I'm lucky, they'll send me home before I get too far. Then again, with my luck, they'll probably make a note to pull my name more often just to annoy me as much as I annoyed them.

I wonder if I can get my boss to confirm and not laugh through the excuse that, "You are so important to the operation of a business that your absence will cause that business to fail."

Probably not.

If I do make it on a jury, the trial had better be worth some laughs or it had better be a case entertaining enough for me to forgive them for the teasing I'm going to get from my co-workers.

~Chandra