a modern miracle of inefficiency
Today was jury duty day, and it was about as bad as I could have expected. I got there at 8AM, and sat around until nearly 10AM before anything happened. At that time, they split the 80 or so people into two groups. I ended up in the second group. The first group was sent off to a court room immediately. My group was told that the courtroom wouldn't be ready until 1:45PM. Yes, almost 4 hours later. So I was effectively stuck in Oakland with nothing to do, and no place to go. I ended up walking north from the courthouse through the center of the city. Oakland really is a boring place. There's basically nothing interesting or exciting about its downtown area. Its generic and similar to just about every other city of the same size/population. One thing that was interesting was that it was somewhat liberating to have hours of free time with absolutely nothing to do. I found myself walking slowly, taking my time. I didn't even run to cross the streets. I sat on a park bench to eat lunch (and the weather was perfect). All the same, I still would have preferred to have gotten the stupid day over with sooner. When 1:45PM finally came, we were sent off to the courtroom, and sat through an introduction of the case by the judge, the lawyers for each side (its a civil case, btw) made a brief statement, and then we were informed that we had to complete a 19 page survey. They weren't going to select the jurors until after reviewing the survey responses, which meant that we all had to come back on Tuesday!! argh. So basically I go back on Tuesday morning, hoping that they don't want me, wasting at least another half day (but with my luck much, much more) and then I find out my fate. Worst case is that I'm selected for the jury, and then the trial is expected to run until at least the end of the 2nd week of May. I'm doomed.
To make things more sickening, this court is stuck in some inefficiency time-warp from the 50s. They take 90-120 minutes for lunch, only work Monday through Thursday, and finish each day at 4:30PM. I really chose the wrong field to work in. I should have gotten into the justice system so that I could have 4 day work weeks, with 2 hour lunch breaks. Its now clear why the wheels of justice turn so slowly.
In other news, the autoshop finally got their act together, sent the estimate, I signed & faxed it back, and my car isn't estimated to be repaired by May 11. The kicker is that my insurance only covers 30 days for the rental car, and May 11 also turns out to be the 30th day of the rental. With my luck, i'll end up stuck on jury duty then as well.