Jury Duty, Smury Duty

Ok, to be honest I have always been a bit excited when I get a jury duty notice in the mail-I feel like it's an honor, not to mention everyone's civil duty, like voting. I mark the date diligently, and have even been known to laminate my little juror badge-just in case. Without fail, the last three times I've been dismissed before even having to appear at the courthouse.

A few weeks ago, three women at my office and a couple facebook friends all mentioned that they had received jury notices. blah, they all stated and I agreed this time around too. I've got a toddler, one on the way that is sucking the life out of me and a job too busy to even step away for a real lunch. I don't have time for jury duty. I laughed at their misfortune. This of course should have told me that Ms. Karma would be present and sure enough I had my very own notice waiting at home for me that same day. Super Duper.

I noted the day and let the receptionist here know that I may not be here. What I didn't realize is that the day I noted was a Saturday. When the recept told me I was crazy and to double check my notice I thought no way can they start doing this on weekends. No way at all. I was right. I just didn't read my notice very well. What it said was that I needed to call sometime the weekend of the 27th, because I was on call the entire week of March 1st. WTF. On call?!!? What am I a doctor? Can they really have me on call an entire week? Isn't it bad enough to have a single day carved out to make us wonder if we have to drive downtown and deal with this junk?? I may have been fortunate enough to get out of one day in the past, but 5...there's just no way.

Last week the news got worse. I got a large envelope from the Federal Court with a letter. It said something like, as you know you're on call the week of March 1st...you've been randomly drawn for a trial scheduled for March 2nd. There was a lengthy questionnaire attached and instructions to complete it immediately and return it to the court. Bad sign, right? The questionnaire gave a brief description of a case (the case? not sure) and asked if I'd heard anything about the case and then went on for 8 pages asking my opinions and biases on the topic of the case. I'm not really sure if I can even talk about it at this point, so let's just say my political stance gives me huge and unwavering opinions and biases on this topic and I made sure that those were clear in my answers. Hopefully that will excuse me, as I really and truly could not be unbiased on a case if it were really on this topic.

So, I mailed my stupid questionnaire off today...fingers crossed they find me too close-minded and biased to even consider sitting on their jury :)