Wasting Away in Juryville

Is the time-consuming process of jury duty too sacred to improve?

I write this as I am sitting in the Jury Assembly Room (JAIL for short) on the 17th floor of the Richard J. Daley Center in downtown Chicago, waiting for something to happen.

I estimate that there are another 130 poor souls who probably have a million things to do and are waiting just like I am in this very same room. The room is actually split in half, with the one half being the “TV room,” and the other half being the “no TV” or quiet room. In the quiet room, you can tell there are quite a few professionals who are trying to keep themselves busy with some sort of work or reading to otherwise occupy this god-awful amount of wasted time.

I was summoned about two weeks ago as a standby juror. Last night I had to call in and find out if I needed to come in today. Sure enough, if your last name began with H through N, you were supposed to come in. This was actually the first time I cursed my last name of Micklewright, as in, “Darn you, Micklewright, why couldn’t you be a Cutler or Favre?”

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Comments

And they wonder why people try to avoid jury duty...

The court system needs to acknowledge that jurors are customers as well as suppliers. When they mistreat jurors, e.g. by wasting their time and not even covering their expenses, qualified ones will try to do everything possible to avoid serving.

Quite Accurate

What a good way to look at this waste. Also consider the juror who is away from work. How much productivity will be lost by their employer as a result of the absense. I think jury duty is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. I wonder what a genuine root cause analysis might reveal.