Call to Duty

Well, this morning I showed up at the courthouse bright and early for my jury duty orientation. After looking for a parking place for - e - ver, I finally arrived in the courtroom, filled out my little info card and clock watched. People continued to trickle in, soon the room was filled and bailiffs were bringing in chairs, benches, etc. to seat everyone. Now I ask you if they know how many people they have summoned, couldn't they be a little better prepared? The time to start was 9:00 am and people were still arriving (parking is a Beyotch downtown). Right at the witching hour a man came in and informed the court administrator that he would need a sign language interpreter. It clearly stated on the summons that if you had either hearing or visual impairments and would need special dispensation to let the court know in advance. Long story short....9:45 we were all sitting and waiting on the court appointed interpreter to arrive, park and present herself for service. Next question: Why would they simply not excuse this man until the next term and explain that he needs to give them proper notice as to his needs? But no, 450 people sat and waited because of 1 person.
Calling the roll took almost an hour, then the judge did his explanation of what would be expected of us as jurors. Then we were divided up into 5 sub-groups (which involved calling the roll again for the show ups) and told when we needed to report again.
At this point, the unthinkable happened, the judge asked for questions. OMG! Were these people not listening when he went over this for 1/2 an hour? One woman asked if she needed to bring her medicine on the days she was scheduled to report. Are you kidding me? Does she think the court is going to recess so Mrs. X can run home and take her Prozac? It's a good thing I'm not the one who has to answer these kinds of questions. I would have told her, yes dear, please do bring your medicine with you unless you take it anally. Another lady decided this would be the perfect time to get some free legal advice on the situation she had when her neighbor backed into her car. One woman wanted to know if she needed to arrange for childcare for her children after school. Gee, no honey, the Big Yellow A-Team Bus will swing by and your precious darlings will be picked up and put to work with the inmates picking up trash. You may collect them after 7:00 at the city jail. It just goes to prove what I've always said. People don't read....people don't listen and part of the problem with the judicial system is that most people who have time to serve on jury duty fall into those don't areas.
Of course, OCD sufferer that I am already has formulated many plans to improve their way of conducting business. Perhaps alphabetizing the names of the juror pool so that you could estimate when your name would be called during roll instead of sitting fixedly, straining to hear over the chorus of coughing, sneezing and nose blowing. The only thing missing were crying children and the fact that no one brought their kids is a miracle of epic proportions which leads me to think the end of time may come soon.
Another improvement would be having color coded cards with 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 on them along with the date to report and date to call prior to reporting for each group, stack them up 1 - 5, 1 - 5, 1 - 5 etc. and begin at the beginning of a row and have each person take one. These 2 things alone would cut about 30 to 45 minutes out of the orientation process.
All that being said, I am excited to serve. I think it will be interesting if I get picked to sit on a jury. However, the judge told us that today would most likely be the only day we ever had to show up because most of the cases in this county are settled out of court. Bummer....I was counting on the $50.00 a day!