My first Job - Kind Of...

As I mentioned, last week I had the pleasure of being called to jury duty for the first time. After I finally found my way to the courthouse, I was directed to a large, drab room with chairs, which functioned only as a depressing holding pen. I’ll admit that at first I was less than thrilled to be sitting in a courthouse at 9 A.M. with a room full of people I didn’t know, but at least I wasn’t there because I had been charged with a crime. Once I resigned myself to the fact that not only did I have to be there, but I also didn’t really have anything better to do with my time, I allowed myself to take in the experience.

The first day, a guy named Larry headed our jury room. Initially, I really wasn’t sure what to think of Larry because he painstakingly went over the instructions for every jury related scenario possible, and unlike other jury room leaders, informed us that he would not be showing a movie. Yet, as soon as he informed us that he felt his life was exactly like the movie “Groundhog Day”, I knew we would be fine. Larry had the ability to simultaneously take his job seriously while also not seeming to care at all, and I find that to be an extremely admirable quality.

On principal, the experience is really interesting. New York City is one with millions of people, and jury duty takes a sliver of those millions and sticks them in a room together for two days. (I’m surprised no one has tried to make a reality show out of this yet.) The result is pretty much emblematic of New York itself; a room full of people from different backgrounds all trying to get out of there as quickly as possible so they can get on with their lives. (Oddly enough, I managed to run into someone who lives in my building, and someone I went to high school with.) Yet when I looked around the room, it was interesting while also strangely sad to know that I would probably never see any of these people again. We would have this one, shared experience, and then we would go on living our lives completely oblivious to one another.

I can’t say that I’m eager to be summoned to jury duty again, but the experience wasn’t as monotonous as I thought it would be. I also made $40/ day for my two days of service, which is $40 / day more than I have made any day since graduation…