Jury Duty

Yesterday, I went over to my parents' house and happened to be there at the time their mail arrived. I noticed a jury duty summons in their mail and had an "oh, crap!" moment.

This morning I managed to unearth from a pile on my desk the jury summons I received awhile ago (why do they arrive so far in advance!?) and noted the date: February 8, 2011.

Oh, crap.

I've been late before when calling in for jury duty, but never a full week. I've always wondered what happens in a situation like this, and now I know.

I went to the web site listed on my summons, scrolled down to the last FAQ, "What should I do if I missed or forgot about my summons date?" and clicked on it to reveal the answer, "Contact the court immediately to reschedule your jury service." At the top of the page is a nice big "Click here to reschedule your jury service" button, which I clicked on . . . and then got the message that the "system in temporarily unavailable" until March 1st, 2011. Argh!

Then, I called the office number listed on the summons and waited thirty minutes until a man with a very warped sense of humor finally answered my call. He actually started laughing when I told him I was calling because I had a summons with a date from last week on it. He gave me such a hard time about why I couldn't find it, and didn't I know it was coming up? Yeah, yeah.

Then he says he's gonna make me a deal and reschedule my summons date. Naturally, he comes up with a date in early June. So I had to do the whole, "Well, you see, there's this clinic in Texas and they're holding a month-long spot for me starting on May 15th, and, well, I'll be catching babies there so, you see, I won't actually be here in June..." He gives me even more grief and then asks me when I plan to be here, so I think quick-like and tell him the last week of June.

The nice man gave me a new jury duty summons date of June 28th. Phew!

And so, the lesson for the day is that if you can manage to remember your jury duty summons within a week or so, you won't go to jail or pay a fine. After that, I'm not sure, but I won't be testing it. My new summons will now be taped up on my calendar, thank you very much.