A week of my life I can never get back

To steal a phrase from one of our sales guys, if you're wondering why all you've gotten from me in the past 8 days is "radio silence," you are about to be clued in.

Almost 2 weeks ago, I had to report for jury duty in New York County. The way it works in New York is, you report for jury duty for a minimum of 2 full days. You sit in a room and they randomly call "panels" of potential jurors. The panel goes to a courtroom and engages in the jury selection process. If you are chosen, you serve for a trial. If you are not chosen, you go back to that room and wait for another panel. If at the end of 2 days you haven't been chosen for a trial, you are released. Otherwise, you serve on that trial.

So 2 weeks ago on Thursday I showed up at 8:45am for my civic duty. We went through an hour or so of instructions and registration and then commenced the waiting phase. I was not called for the first or second panel, but was the first name read for the third panel. There were maybe 60 people on this panel, to come to a jury of 12 with 2 alternates. Out of the 60, they drew 18 names out of a hat to sit in the jury box and be questioned by the judge and the attorneys. Wouldn't you know I was one of the chosen.

We took a seat in the box and basically had to answer a series of questions about ourselves. The goal at this point is for the judge and the lawyers to get comfortable with the fact that the people they select can examine the case in an unbiased way and render a just decision. I thought for sure that my recent court case would get me off the hook. I mean, how could I be unbiased when I had just been sued, right? Wrong!

We answered all the standard questions, the lawyer asked us some questions, and at about 4:45pm, they sent us out of the courtroom to do their selection and see if we were selected. We filed back in and they announced that they had selected 5 of the 18 people to be jurors. They read the names of four men and....me. :( How was it that I was the only woman on that panel whom they deemed unbiased!? :( Bummer. So this happened on Thursday, but they only had 5 jurors and would need to select the rest the next day. Also, Monday was a Jewish holiday, so I was instructed that I should report to my job on Friday and Monday and report back to court on Tuesday. Joy.

...sorry, work got busy...to be continued!