My experience at jury duty

So I got called to do jury duty. I've always wanted to do jury duty. I was very excited about it.

I'm happily driving to jury duty yesterday in the wonderful LA traffic. About half way there I have that sinking feeling in my stomach. You know, the one that occurs before your brain has time to process that you really screwed up? Well, I had it..... I had forgotten my summons.

I frantically call my husband and tell him he HAS to bring it to me by 10:15. It's 9:45. We live in LA. He was asleep.

I rush to the court house and swear up and down to the parking attendant who doesn't want to let me in because I don't have my summons that I do indeed have jury duty and I swear I wouldn't lie about it. He finally lets me in.

At this point I should have realized that the day was not going to go my way.

Husband shows up at exactly 10:15 after freaking out because he chose the freeway with the most traffic but mostly because I'm freaking out. I run across to traffic to get it. I trip, of course, but I'm fine.

I hustle upstairs and check in and I'm told we have a break until 10:35. I had been able to skip orientation because I did it online so I got there right at break time.

So, I go downstairs in an overcrowded, ancient elevator that makes me nauseous to get some water and head back up. I head to the restroom where I am told by a fellow juror that the toilets don't flush and there is no water. Awesome.

Then I sit. And sit. And sit. I watch TV on my iPad, I read a book, I work, and I sit.



At noon we are released for lunch and told to be back by 1:30. The only thing around in a McDonald's. Ew.

So I go in. There are about 10 very sad zombie like homeless people walking around asking for money. There are also employees following them around asking them to leave. Of course, a fight broke out, and cops are called. I huddle in a corner and try to eat my cheese and bread and appear invisible.

A gentleman sits next to me and proceeds to have a mumbled conversation to himself. He then darts up, digs in the trash can, and emerges with a cup. He rinses it out and fills it up and drinks out of it. Time for me to go.

It's a nice day to I decide I'll sit outside of the court house. Bad idea. It's in the ghetto. It's bad.

I go back up and sit. It's 12:20.

That's when I realized the air conditioner was also broken. I continued to sit.

I also, soon after, realized that I had a greasy, creepy stare stalker. So I couldn't take my sweater off even though it was sweltering.

The only announcement we had the whole day was that we needed to stop complaining that the toilets were broken because we could use the restrooms on the first floor. This announcement came around 3. As if we were supposed to know that just because the toilets on our floor were broken didn't mean that they weren't broken in the whole building. Thanks for that, after we had dealt with it all day.

The whole thing was like a horrible social experiment where they waited to see if someone was going to crack.

I never even saw the inside of a court room.

This officially ended my excitement about jury duty.