I received a jury summons in the mail yesterday. Boooooo. I don’t want to sit on a jury! I have a friend who loves jury duty, but he’s crazy. (edit: I have, apparently, MULTIPLE friends and they’re ALL crazy) If I’m selected, I might have to deal with horrible people having done horrible things, and I have a really hard time dealing with suffering. I can’t watch horror movies – it’s not the gore that freaks me out, it’s the suffering. I’m far too empathetic.

I have a chance, of course, to ask to be excused. The most common way is to declare hardship; “I can’t afford to be off of work this long”, “I have no daycare for my children”, “my job is under deadline and it’s critical that I’m there”, etc. My employer is awesome enough to pay its employees for serving on a jury. I won’t accrue vacation time while I’m doing it, but I’ll at least get paid to sit there, regardless. So I can’t declare financial hardship. I don’t have kids to take care of. And “I don’t want to” is not a valid hardship.

But. A friend is egging me on to say, “I have a terminal disease and I don’t want to use any of the time I have left doing this.”

Which….is valid. Totally.

But it feels like a cop-out. I mean..yeah. Dying, limited time, etc. But, I’d be sitting at WORK if not in the jury box, so …..net time lost is zero, really. And money made, regardless. So, in the grand scheme, it doesn’t actually matter. But at work, I can feel like I’m being useful and screw around on the internet while I’m listening to meetings that don’t really matter. On a jury, I have to pay attention.

I’m likely worrying about nothing. In ALL the times I’ve been summoned, I’ve never had to actually serve.

….and because I just said that, I’m totally going to have to. Hopefully it will be a theft and not rape or murder.

What do you think, Hive Mind? Should I try playing the ALS card to get out of my civic duty?