02.06.23
A man, an hour late to jury duty, says, “I’m producing a show right now, so I’m unavailable for the next two weeks.” I feel like he could have just said he had a work commitment. The Producer is reprimanded by an otherwise charming and friendly-seeming clerk, because he did not hear the instructions that he has already stated twice. I am Team Clerk. The Producer seems like a douche.
There are some technical difficulties in jury duty this morning, eventually resolved to show a video that is supposedly from 2016 but looks and sounds more like a relic of 2004. That video is followed by another about implicit biases. More videos in jury duty than I remember. It feels like Driver’s Ed.
When you are a jury clerk, do you also get called for jury duty? You must, right? Or would that be some kind of conflict of interest? I wonder if that feels like a respite for them when they receive it. A glimpse into how the other half lives. A woman two rows behind me, dressed all in black, including sunglasses, with her hair slicked back into a bun and AirPods in, is rocking back and forth in her chair, unaware of its irritating squeak. Though, in fairness, she seems like the kind of person who wouldn’t care — that’s the real “how the other half lives.”
The jury clerk who may or may not get called for jury duty himself now and then contradicts the signs around the room saying not to use cell phones. He doesn’t acknowledge the bold signage, but says we are free to use our cell phones or laptops or tablets, just turn your ringers off. Seconds after saying this, someone’s phone rings, loud, with “Rockstar” by Hannah Montana (one of her best). I feel a kinship with this faceless person sitting behind me (I don’t want to turn around and make them feel embarrassed), as someone whose ringtone is “MMMBop” by Hanson.
We sit and wait. I read my book and check my email here and there. It’s mostly silent in the room, save two men sitting behind me to my right who seem to know each other, chatting quietly. The last time I had jury duty, upstate, I saw a ton of people I knew. I sat with a girl I had gone to high school with, I caught up with a friend I did theater with, I waved to a boy whose bar mitzvah I attended before he switched schools. I don’t think I know anyone here, but then again I am in the front third of available chairs, so maybe an old friend is sitting behind me somewhere. Unlikely, as New York City is huge — I feel like I’m more likely to see a celebrity than an old friend of mine. Also, most of my friends live in Brooklyn, not Manhattan. And in any case, I hope to not be interrupted by small talk, because I’m reading right now.
Every now and then someone accidentally starts to play a video or song out loud on their phones before quickly and embarrassingly muffling the speaker. I wonder if their hearts beat faster as they turn them off. Cut the red wire.
It’s noon and I have only received one email today that required my attention, and I received it at 7am from a particularly tenacious colleague of mine, and I took care of it before I left the house this morning. This colleague is the type of emailer that makes me wish I could react to emails in the same way I can texts — with a heart or a thumbs up or a “haha.” They always send one more little thing that kind of warrants a response. I don’t want to be rude, but I feel like I’m grasping at straws to come up with a reply that justifies sending an entire other email. I wonder briefly if I could have kept my civic duty to myself, and not needed to lose out on a day’s worth of pay, especially considering I can do the vast majority of my job from my phone (and to think I could have brought my laptop with me!). Surely, though, if I had tried to keep it quiet, I would be appointed to the jury for something insane that will take two and a half months, like the Trump corporation case that was mentioned when we were receiving instructions and learning what to expect (but I would have never been appointed to that jury due to my implicit biases, unless lied a lot about my implicit biases, which is, famously, a felony).
I spend a few minutes on my phone between David Sedaris essays. I look up the word “municipal” before sending it in a text to my mom, realizing that I’ve used it a couple of times in the past few days without being exactly sure what it means. I only know the context in which I’ve heard other people use it. I make tentative plans for the end of the month with my friend Anna, which I’ll confirm when I get back home to my wall calendar.
I glance at the muted TV to find NY1’s lower third reading “City Drops Municipal Vaccine Mandate,” which I understand in a more honest way now, thanks to my Merriam Webster app. It soon changes to “Beyonce Makes History,” which I feel needs to be more specific. The man on the other end of my four chair row is watching something on his tablet and says, “Oh my gosh, they’re kissing,” out loud.
We break at 12:30 until 2:15, which feels like an insane amount of time. A few people resolve to stay in the room. I consider doing this, but I had a conversation with myself last night that I need to try harder to actually get 10,000 steps each day, so I decide to go outside and wander a bit.
I pop into a Pret thinking that a grilled cheese and tomato soup sound good. They don’t have it. I’m not sure if don’t have it anymore as a chain, or if it’s just this location. I used to get this for lunch a lot when I worked at my first job out of college because there was a Pret nearby (though, I guess, there’s always a Pret nearby). I leave and wander more.
At 1:30 I worry that I won’t allow myself enough time to eat anything, so I move toward Chinatown and go in somewhere to eat some cheap dumplings with a flimsy plastic fork. When I’m done, I do another lap around the block and return to the building. A man in the elevator compliments my Mets tote, calling it a “bookbag” which I love. “Lookin’ good for this year, huh?” he says. He takes out his AirPods to talk to me until he gets out on the ninth floor. I ride the rest of the way up to eleven.
As people are trickling back in by 2:15, a new man is at the front of the room, giving a non-update update. The people who handle the room at the juror’s office always seem very happy to have the attention of a crowd, but this guy in particular seems like he loves it. There is very nearly a pause for applause after he finishes his rundown of what’s going on, followed by “thanks for your patience.” I think it would be really funny if I started to clap, but I don’t know how that’ll play in this room. Probably bad? Probably bad. Or flat, at the very least.
Someone in the room is asleep and snoring, rather loudly. They’re behind me. I am desperate to turn around and see who it is, but I pretend not to notice, and just fidget in my chair. The leather of these chairs is noisy, and it makes me self-conscious to move, but I have trouble sitting perfectly still for extended periods of time. You know, like a child.
We’re dismissed at 3:30, and I’m ten or so pages shy of finishing my book. I worried earlier that I’d need another, forgetting how slow of a reader I am. I call my mom after leaving the building to tell her about the late night showrunner apparently turned CEO of a prominent news network who was in the same juror pool (is that the term? Seems weird) as me. He looked familiar to me, and very decidedly like a TV guy (not unlike The Producer, but less of a douche and clearly higher up), but I couldn’t place him until they called everyone’s name to give each person a proof of service. I applied to be his assistant once — that’s a really powerful guy. My mom says jury duty is the great equalizer. I agree, and I relish an opportunity to be around different types of people. I’m around the same types of people most of the time, which is fine, but it’s nice to get out of the bubble now and then. I like people a lot. I think they are friendly and interesting, for the most part. My mom says she thinks it’s good to just go to jury duty, and not avoid it if you can afford to do so. Whatever your feelings on “the system” it perpetrates, this is the system we have right now. It’s an inconvenience, sure, but if you were on trial for something, wouldn’t you hope that someone like you was on the jury? I say I would, I didn’t mind having to be there. Though, granted, I was only there for six and a half hours, and all I did was read Happy-Go-Lucky. I walk up to 14th Street to finish my steps before hopping on the A train and going home.
