This is a long and somewhat personal post about my experience with jury duty. You’ve been warned.
Like many people, I have generally not appreciated being summoned for jury duty. My distaste for the process has been compounded by the fact that the selection computers seem to like me — while most of my friends have not been called more than once in their lifetimes, I have been called three times in less than ten years. In each case, I have not been chosen to serve on an actual jury; in two cases, I wasn’t even questioned by the attorneys before being sent home. This was, I had felt at the time, the best possible outcome.
My most recent summons was for service this week. (King County has a rather onerous system — you are automatically assigned a four-day term of duty, and even if you are not selected to be on a jury your first day, they can keep calling you back each of the next three days until you are finally selected. Oftentimes, you might be excused for one or even two of the four days, but you might never be excused. This time, I was excused twice, and required to show up twice.)
