So I got called in for jury duty. Actually, that happened back in August, but I was going to be away during the time I was supposed to go in so I put it off until early November. I called last night, to see if I had to appear and I had to, so early this morning, I drove off to the Superior Court for what was ultimately a giant waste of my time.

Here’s why.

Granted, it could have been a lot worse and it has been in the past. I got to stand in a giant line of people waiting to check in and while I was in line, it became obvious that they were handing out pink excused notices left and right. Literally for anything, with one exception that I’ll talk about in a second. You walked up to the window, they said, literally, “do you have anything going on between now and December 1?” and if you said anything, they handed you a pink slip and told you to go home.

I’m not a good candidate for jury duty anyhow, I have never made it past the first round of questioning in a courtroom and it could have gone that far, I’m just glad it didn’t. My brother-in-law is a retired cop. We talk about criminal matters all the time. No defense attorney in the world wants me in the jury because I am generally positive toward the police and I figure that if you get arrested and the prosecutor decides to build a case against you, there’s got to be something going on. There are exceptions, of course, but 99% of the time, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. They don’t want me.

There are other reasons as well. I’m diabetic and the medication that I’m on requires that I have constant access to water. I go through 10-12 16-oz bottles of water a day. The meds make me thirsty and the excess blood sugar gets flushed out of my system by going to the bathroom a lot. They’re not going to stop a trial once an hour so a juror can take a whizz. They don’t want me.

I was ready to offer that excuse when I got up to the window, but it wasn’t necessary. I got the “you got anything going on?” question and I said no because, other than plans for Thanksgiving, I don’t. I’m honest about it. Then, they asked if being there would be a financial hardship, which it wouldn’t since I’m on salary and I get paid no matter what. I did say that I was one of the few key and alarm code holders, so that if anything happened to anyone else, I’d have to be available to let people in the door and I got a pink slip for that. I didn’t even try, it was just a random comment. 15 minutes after I arrived, I was on the street again.

The one lady that I was really surprised at, and I suppose it depends on which window you got, was an old lady on chemotherapy who said she couldn’t just stop her chemo to sit on a jury. She did say that she’d be happy to, once her chemo was done, assuming she was still alive, but the person at the window said “we can’t give you an extension that long!”

Meanwhile, all of the other windows are just throwing pink slips at people. I figure they had way too many people show up and were trying to weed it down a little. Maybe that poor lady needed to move to another window, because she would have been gone in a second.

I don’t have anything against jury duty in general, although I know enough trial lawyers to know that it’s all legal performance art. It’s two people getting paid to influence a jury. None of them really care about the facts. They just want to get paid, like everyone else, and they get bonuses, or recognition, or even just keep their jobs, by successfully getting people convicted or getting people off. That’s a piss-poor way to run a justice system, especially when you’re trying to convince people of your side who aren’t bright enough to get out of jury duty.

It’s a good thing I’m never going to be in a courtroom as a defendant. I’d just laugh at the absurdity of it all.

So, I’m off for another year. At least I know what to say next time. I’ve got a company to run and as far as I’m concerned, the livelihood of the people under my employ comes before the dog and pony show in the courtroom. They don’t want me and I don’t really want them. Just glad it’s done.