A few months back I received a jury duty summons in the mail. This was a few days after laughing at my wife because she got one. Turns out that Karma is even tied to the jury duty system. Who knew. When I got my notice I made a mental note of when my date to appear was supposed to be and promptly lost the summons that included my jury ID number.

A few weeks go by and my jury duty date is supposed to be the next day. I realize that I now have an issue. I don’t have the summons with my jury ID number on it. I look up the number for jury duty services online and call in to the automated system. It takes me 2 tries and 35 minutes, but when I’m done I’m under the impression that I have been excused from service the following day and that I’m “done” with jury duty. Woo Hoo! I go on blissfully with my life.

Not so fast.

2 weeks ago I received a new post card from the jury duty folks. In big block letters across the top it says, “FAILURE TO RESPOND TO JURY SUMMONS“. It then goes on to say that I didn’t respond to my first selection date and that a second failure to report would result in the court initiating a “contempt of court” proceedings against me. They follow that up with this description:

“Contempt of Court charge is punishable by fine up to $500.00, 25 days in jail, or community service.”

$500, I could live with that. I wouldn’t like it, but it wouldn’t kill me. Community service, again, wouldn’t kill me. 25 days in jail, something tells me that’s not going to be like being on vacation.

So I drop what I’m doing an call the number listed on the card. It’s at this time that I realize that I STILL don’t have my jury ID number. This means I can’t use any of the automated phone systems. I need to physically talk to a human. I go through the automated system and push # at the right time to get me in the queue to talk to human. But, a recorded voice comes on the line and says, “Due to the high volume of calls, the wait time to speak to a representative would exceed 30 minutes. Please try again later” and then I hear a click as it hangs up on me. I try to call 3 times the following day with the same results. I then try at least 2 times each day for the next 6 days all ending in the same fashion. I’m starting to freak out.

Yesterday was my lucky day. I finally made it through the automated phone maze (which I was able to do without waiting for prompts from the automated voice after so many previous attempts.) When I pushed Zero to talk to a rep, rather than hearing the familiar message and subsequent “click”, a dew recording said, “There are currently 22 callers ahead of you on hold.” SWEET! I put the phone on speaker and went about my work. Every few minutes it would give me an update as to the amount of people still in front of me. When it finally said I was next I picked up the phone to talk to my human.

I explained my situation and the very nice and helpful lady said, “No problem, we’ll reschedule you.” She’s sending me out a new jury duty summons which will have my jury ID number on it. I will guard this with my life. If I hadn’t lost that number, I would have been able to clear this up with one phone call. Instead I spent an extra week basically in panic mode trying to figure out how I was going to enjoy 25 days in jail.

As it turns out, this was really all my fault to begin with. The lady says that on the original summons it says to call in as SOON AS YOU RECEIVE IT. Without calling to confirm you received it, calling the night before is totally useless. I apparently missed that part.