Jury Duty

I (Megs) just successfully survived jury duty!  I thought for sure I would be chosen for a case just knowing my luck, but my name thankfully was never called.  There is a small part of me that was curious about seeing the process.  But ultimately with all that's going on with work and life right now, it feels good that I only had to sit in a room with complete strangers for about 15 hours.

That room itself was interesting to observe though.  I served duty at the King County Superior Court and the juror assembly room was HUGE!  On my first day there were probably a couple hundred people in there.  I think it's an interesting phenomenon to put a completely random, diverse group of people in a room for 8 hours.  Most people around me were reading newspapers or books, working on their computers, playing on their phones or taking a nap.  The usual things you would expect.  There were others who struck up a conversation with the stranger sitting next to them and (I'm not kidding) talked the whole rest of the time!  So some people even made friends from jury duty.  You get the occasional rude person who talks loudly on their cell phone as if everyone can't hear them.  And then one guy sitting next to me didn't have anything with him so he just sat there!  I couldn't believe he didn't bring ANYTHING to do.  I would have gone crazy.

And then over time you start to notice this collective spirit come over the group.  A kind of "We're all in this together" attitude.  You can see it on the faces around you without them saying a word.  When they look at you it's like they're saying "I know this sucks, but we can do this.  We can make it through!"

I gotta say I was impressed with the staff who worked there. I thought it would feel like the DMV where you know the employees detest their jobs and you have to go through a bunch of bureaucracy.  It was just the opposite here.  The staff was very friendly, empathetic, informative, and seemed like they actually enjoyed their job.  That made the process a lot easier to endure. 

So unfortunately no dramatic stories to pass along to you about a lawsuit or robbery case.  Maybe next time....but let's hope that's not anytime soon!