Jury Duty - Day 1

So I had jury duty today.  To sum up, I finished an entire book today, so that pretty much describes what happened.  But I kept notes on random thoughts during the day and I'll post them here.  I must care about writing if I'm willing to take notes on my thoughts.  That wouldn't have occurred to me before this blog.

I noticed that a few people were wearing a suit and tie to jury duty.  Why?  I guess I've never really felt comfortable in a suit, so it's definitely not a goto outfit for me, but wouldn't everyone want to dress casually here?  I mean, maybe you wear a suit if you think there's a good chance that you'll be let out early and then you'll be able to go straight to work.  But really, what percentage of people are going back to work when they already told their boss they had jury duty.  One of the suit wearers was fairly young, so I imagine that it's like his first year in law school and he's hoping to impress one of the attorneys he meets and then score a nice summer internship.

A number of people brought laptops.  I kind of see jury duty like being on a plane when you're going somewhere for work.  You can do work on the plane, but really, how many chances do you get to just sit back and read a book and not think about work, you know?  I used to have a laptop for work, but I definitely wouldn't have brought it to jury duty.  They even provide a few computers for us to use to check e-mail and stuff, though we're warned not to go to inappropriate websites.  If someone actually did, would someone actually have said something.  I'm thinking that I wouldn't say anything and just ignore it.

We had to watch a video on the jury process.  One of the things it talked about was that they might ask personal questions and then it cuts to a lawyer asking a juror with lots of other jurors and lawyers in the room if they've ever been the victim of a crime.  And I just thought that it would be awesome if someone answers, "Yes, I was raped by my priest when I was young."  That would be way more interesting than my answer, which would be, "I was the victim of a hit and run, but really, no damage was done to the car."

Other thoughts...  We were specifically told to not have alcohol during lunch.  I wonder if this was a problem before they started telling people not to do this....  There was a guy who brought Harry Potter 6 and 7.  He must be a way faster reader than me if he thought he'd need both of those books....  Who are these people that don't bring books and just kind of stare ahead?  It just seemed kind of creepy.