Jury Duty

So a week and a half ago I get a call from an old roommate who said I had a Jury Summons waiting for me. So, later that night I go pick it up. It was a Wednesday. The Summons had me start calling in 6 days later, the next Monday. You know the process right, you call the night before, and they tell you if they want you...

So anyway, I call on Tuesday night and they tell me to report on Thursday. FYI, the courts in LA county are closed for a mandatory furlough every third Wednesday of the month. I was hoping that that extra day off would cover me for not having to report. Boy was I wrong.

I show up early Wednesday morning at the Beverly Hills courthouse. I was right on time, and the Jury room was already full. I sought out a seat and planted myself. Over the next 30-40 minutes i just sat there and watched all the other weirdo's come in late.

Have you ever seen the movie "12 Angry Men"? Its about a jury. Well, I thought it might be like that, but not exactly. I would never make it that far. I would like to point out some of the different 'personalities' that I noticed:

Two of the ladies I rode up in the elevator with were definitely dressed like they lived in Beverly Hills. They were the 'Modernists'. Very modern, very 'made up', way to much make up. Honestly they probably raided the closets of their kids... who are my age. Even weirder was the fact that they couldn't take their sunglasses off, and we were in the parking garage, and elevator.

Next I saw another group of people. 'The Confused'. Their outfits were put on way to early in the morning, definitely before they woke up. Each article of clothing was acceptable by itself, but when paired with something completely different, it was fashionably atrocious.

Then there's the 'Late and Oblivious'. I found it really annoying every time someone came in late. I mean how hard is it?! No one lives that far away. Then the clerk lady come in to give us the orientation. Then more people come in and act as they've missed nothing.

On the other hand there was the 'To naive to understand'. This was mostly foreign peoples. One mexican lady, who also used her youngest daughters wardrobe, she had people on all sides of her explaining a second and third time what she should be doing. If she were to just not act stupid and watch what others were doing, she would have been fine, but she insisted on having her hand held by everyone.

Similarly there was a really loud russian lady (I think it was a lady, or the missing link) who was simply to loud herself to understand anything. She kept talking to herself in her really deep voice, then fumbling through one of her three purses, then yapping on her phone as loud as possible. Honestly her voice was as deep as mine when I try to make my voice really deep. And that's DEEP. Not only that but she was wearing 3-4 crucifix necklaces. Not kidding at all. As if the large gaudy anti-vampire cross wasn't enough, she had plenty to back it up. She was super anorexic thin with a extra large head, and a mouth larger than Steven Tyler! And he's known for a huge mouth! A few minutes into one of her loud phone conversions one guy told her to shut-up cause she was so loud and he couldn't hear. It wasn't Jim, because of he super keen sense of hearing, he was able to focus his hearing toward the clear giving out instructions. I did think it would be great if she didn't shut up that the guy would take the phone from her and smash it on the floor. Then it would have been great.

Then as the clerk was standing in front of the entry door, (ask late people kept piling in) She had just finished announcing that you are not supposed to wear 'beach' attire, (ie sandles, shorts, t-shirts, tanktops, etc.) then in wanders some bottle blond wearing one of the shortest skirt I'd ever witnessed, and flip flops And she was toting three different bags of some sort. Now really... Do you NEED three different bags to serve on jury duty? I was happy when most of those people who I've desrcribed got called to stay late.

So anyway, after 90 min. of waiting for stupid people to ask even stupider questions the clerk typed on the computer, then called about 50 people's names. She told them they could take a lunch, then flat out asked them to leave. Then she released us from duty cause there was only 1 court case that day. It was brilliant! Everyone in the room was immediately ecstatic, as if they had just won something. Then they all started talking to one another, and being all nice and friendly. It was kind of annoying. I mean, why couldn't they be nice and friendly before hand? Just ridiculous.

My name was the fifth from the last person. I guess that means I was ranked pretty low on the 'to serve' list, which is great to know. Then they gave us our excusal papers and we left. The entire building only had 1 working elevator, so that was kind of stupid. But I treated myself to lunch at Panda Express. I was going to call Cheryl to see what she was up to, but I figured that she would already be done with lunch by 1pm. I found out later that she was also at the mall exactly when I was, its just that she was looking for books, and I was looking for food.