Doing my duty

Jury duty is so much fun. It involves lots of waiting around for them to call your name. Highly exciting. The entire group was briefed on procedures and stuff. The highlight was when they had to do another announcement reminding us not to smoke in the restrooms as the whole building is a non-smoking facility. Seriously?! Someone was smoking in the restroom? What the hell is wrong with people. They were pretty explicit about the not smoking thing in the video.

The video orientation was pretty hilarious. It was about 20 minutes long. 10 of those minutes are spent telling you what a valuable service you are providing to society. Then they tell you how rewarding it can be for you - apparently you can make many lifelong friends with the people you serve with. The closest I've come to a "friend" today was a woman insistent on telling me how delicious her sausage from the food court was "it was right off the grill and greasy!"

The video goes on to tell you about all the waiting you'll be doing. In fact, they show a guy using one of the tables to work on a jigsaw puzzle waiting to be called. I figured it was just for dramatic effect. I mean who even thinks to bring a jigsaw puzzle? I dismissed it as an editorial embellishment but I was looking for a place to set up my computer on some of the counters around here and there's a sign posted reading: Please do not use this counter for puzzles. So maybe I'll bring one in tomorrow.