I haven’t gotten stuck with jury duty in almost 30 years. Bingo bango, I suddenly got hit with a jury duty notice to be on standby for the one week this year that I’m going to be out of state on the first real vacation I was going to have in years. Haven’t had a real vacation that didn’t involve family obligations in several years, so it would really suck the wind right out of the clouds to have to cancel it (and lose my 50% upfront deposit) to be “on standby” for jury duty.
No, I didn’t cancel my vacation, and forfeit the 50% I paid upfront to the B&B. I took a wait and see approach, and filled out the jury duty form, checking off all the boxes that didn’t disqualify me, but requested a deferral. All I did was simply state that I was going to be out of state that week, but didn’t want to shirk my civic duty, and asked whether it could be rescheduled for another week. I stated nothing about being on vacation, and having to forfeit half the cost of it if they didn’t honor my request. The form states that “your request may be denied.”
I got lucky. The county granted my request to reschedule. So, my vacation will happen. But, in exchange, instead of being on standby for an entire week, I’ll end up getting assigned for one particular day, TBD by the powers that be who schedule these things. I’ve done jury duty before. It sucks, and involves a lot of waiting around. I think I’ll bring a Mary SanGiovanni book.
Knowing when you need to show up is better than having to call some number every night to find out whether your juror number is on the “get here tomorrow morning” list. Besides, if you’re on standby, you will end up having to go to the courthouse for jury duty one of those days, so knowing ahead of time which one is a good thing.
I haven’t had jury duty in 10+ years. Here we’re ‘on call’ for 3 months. We get a letter in the mail saying to call such and such a number on whatever date. I’ve only had to report once. I didn’t get picked thank goodness. The last time by sheer chance my boss at the time had also gotten the jury duty letter LOL
You’re doing well if you haven’t been hit up in 30 years. I get a letter every two years or so, though luckily the last few cases have been cancelled at the eleventh hour.
The mention of Mary reminded me that a certain transplanted little troglodyte has been attacking gay & trans people again on Twitter. So far they’ve all ignored him. Maybe I’m wrong but I have a feeling we’ve reached ‘peak Pacione.’ Nicky’s been very quiet since he was shunted off to live with mommy in Florida. His blog’s been inactive for over 18 months and he seems to have stopped writing altogether. He’s lost his momentum before but I think he’s lost it for good this time. There’s a sense now that things have moved on and left Nicky behind. Most of us who know about him can’t be bothered with him anymore and anyone new probably dismisses his random flare ups as white noise. Either way it means he’s no longer getting the response and attention he wants. Maybe if everyone keeps ignoring him he’ll finally give up and fade away.