Jury Duty

The first of Jury Duty is: you complain about Jury Duty.

In an effort to not go against the rules, here we go: let me set the scene. It’s last Wednesday, the temperature in New York had been hovering at an inhuman 5 degrees Fahrenheit for a week already. The weatherman was warning us of certain death to come the next day. Ok, not certain death, but a BOMBOGENESIS. Now don’t get me wrong, I work for 1,700 rabbis and that term was CLEARLY biblical in origin, but I had never heard of it. All I knew was, it was cold AF and the meteorologists I follow on twitter (shoutout @jimcantore) were comparing it to a blizzard-hurricane combo. What in the literal f***.

I left work on Wednesday praying for a snow day… until I realized I wasn’t going to work the next day anyway. I had jury duty. My coworkers kept telling me that in this impending storm, the courts were sure to close. Call the night before, they said. If schools close, the courts will close, they said. They were wrong.

So the next morning, as all of my coworkers snuggled in bed in their PJs with hot coffee in mugs… I put on 4 layers of clothes and snow boots, and trudged through wind gusts and horizontal blowing snow down to Chinatown. Don’t get me wrong, I’d LOVE to serve on a jury. As an ex-attorney who has watched every episode of law and order 100 times and still has a pretty adamant hatred toward police, I can think of nothing I’d rather do more than explain to my fellow jurors what “innocent until proven guilty” and “beyond a reasonable doubt” means. I had dreams of 12 Angry Men, but with me as the holdout juror that convinces everyone else that a man was clearly innocent. I have incredible distrust for authority in general, and that extends even further against the police. In other words, there’s pretty much no way in hell I’d be picked for a criminal jury. I have “pre-emptive strike” written across my forehead in red permanent marker. However, this is what made my jury duty trip even more frustrating. I knew it was for naught! Maybe next time I’m called, I can just send them this blog as evidence and skip the blizzard-hurricane trek downtown. But even worse, I was selected for a jury in civil court. BO-RING.

But, I did it. I didn’t have a choice. I had a jury summons that said, “PREVIOUSLY ABSENT, MUST SERVE.” In red. You see, I had been called for jury duty before. Twice, in fact. The first time, I was going to be in London on the date of service, so I requested my automatic one-time adjournment. The second time I was summoned I was going to be in Costa Rica. But there’s no automatic second adjournment option, so I just didn’t show up. I know, I know, world’s smallest violin playing for me and my worldly travels. Point is, I had to go to the court house this time, bombogenesis or not.

I got down there and sure enough, there in the hallway were 100 other of my soon-to-be-closest-friends. We all complained together. It was a grand old time. Once we were let in the waiting room, there was a woman who told us all about jury duty. She is the equivalent of a “fluffer” in porn. Getting us all ready for the big show. Another simile: she was like the warm-up comedian before the live taping of The View; she got us HYPE for what was to come, and she thought way too highly of herself and her power trip. Maybe I should have used that second comparison first.

Anyway, this woman was obnoxious. She told us approximately 118 times that if we were unable to serve, we needed to go across the street and request an adjournment. Not too many people left. In hindsight, I am 90% sure this is because no one wanted to go outside, period. The bombogenesis was in full effect and I was monitoring the auto-text messaging from NY Courts as various court closings came through to my phone. New York City was never one of them. And then we sat.

And then we continued to sit. Jury duty is a lot of sitting. Thankfully I brought my kindle. But even better, jury duty is PRIME people watching. It would make a great case study. Over 100 people in a room, trapped and waiting, antsy and half asleep. The guy behind me started the snore. The woman next to me took out a Joel Osteen book. It was going to be a longggg day.

Soon enough, I made friends. This happens pretty much everywhere I go. There was a girl who was a nurse at NYU who was semi thankful to be in jury duty dong nothing versus in the ER dealing with bombogenesis fallout. And my friend Mrs. Joel Osteen was a nursery school aid/home business entrepreneur aka skincare pyramid scheme participant. Yes, she asked for my contact information. No, my skin has not improved.

After 4 hours of sitting and waiting, a state of emergency was declared for New York City. The volume of chatter increased as we discussed what that meant for our fates. Our warm-up comedian came out of her side office, and told us that there was only one judge in, and he didn’t need us. She told us we were getting credit for time served. (I know that’s the incarceration term, not the jury duty term, but same thing.) CHEERS erupted from the crowd. Some guy in the back wished our warm-up comedian’s grandson a happy birthday. She thanked him. I wondered how they got so close in 4 hours’ time.

I picked up my paper proving my service, quickly took a photo of it and uploaded it to the cloud so as never to lose credit for my time, and I sloshed my way back to the subway. In my four hours in the dungeons of civil court, a foot of snow had fallen. I finally arrived home around 3 pm, left to ponder all of those criminals I didn’t get a chance to save from jail. Maybe next time. In 7 years.