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nwhikerNot me, Linnea.
So, Linnea was called for jury duty last year. We postponed because it would have been in the middle of the school year, not cool.
However, it's time for her to go, and man, do I have some MAJOR issues.
Getting out of it is difficult, as it should be, and she should serve, there is no good reason for her not to. Except for transportation.
She was called to King County Superior Court. There are two possible locations. They do not tell you which location you will need to get to.
One is in DT Seattle. Disagreeable and a bit iffy because, well, it's DT Seattle and that area is known to be a bit problematic. Should be ok, though. I can drive her to a bus and she'll be straight there.
The other location is in South King County, in Kent. We are in North King County. Options for getting there and back, considering the time of day:
-- Bus. Leave here at 6am, it'll take 2.5 hours, 15 minutes less if I drive her to the bus. Return? 2 hours, and I have to pick her up in Redmond. Total she'd be spending almost 5 hours on transit.
-- Drive her. She'd like this solution. SB it would take about an hour to get there, and 90 minutes for me to get back. Reverse that for the evening. This would have me in the car for almost 5 hours, maybe a bit less if traffic is good, but it's one of the worst commutes in the county, and I would only have the carpool one way.
So yeah. There is no way getting back and forth to the court in Kent is doable at least without major inconvenience for her and me. But there is also no way to specify in the forms she had to fill out that transportation to/from that district court would be problematic. I must admit to being very annoyed by this.
All that, btw, for the princely sum of $10, which they encourage you to donate. Bus fare alone with be twice that (she has to switch from Sound Transit to Metro, which means two fares of $2.75 each way, iirc) and gas won't be far off that.
I understand that it's a civic duty. I also understand that turning it into something only the privileged can afford to do, and they're the most likely to want to get out of it, isn't a great thing. But for someone working by the hour, it's a major sacrifice even if they can drive.
Way back when, pre-kids, I got called for jury duty. My company did not give time off and at that time, you got called for a full week. My options were:
-- take vacation time (and they were mega-stingy with that, you got no vacation the first year and one week the years after that, graduating to two weeks when you'd been with them for five years) so no way was I giving up my whole one week of vacation
-- take it off as 'leave without pay', but they charged you for that, taking off one day without pay would dock your pay for 1.5 days, which was no doubt illegal, but eh, it was the early 90s.
-- work the extra hours nights and weekends, which I opted to do. I got called on a jury on effing Friday, after sitting in the big room for 4 full days, the trial was Monday and Tuesday, so I had to make up 48 hours. That was not a fun few weeks, LOL.
Damn that company was awful. This was also the company that said they would fire anyone who got sick between Christmas and New Years, so yeah, I went to work with the flu (sick as a dog, I was), and I wasn't the only one there sitting at my desk with a fever, head in my arms. One guy was curled up under this desk in a sleeping bag. Almost half the company was out in early January because of the number of people who came in sick, LOL. And they did end up firing two people, one of whom was, tbf, in Mexico, the other, however, was out sick and just could not make it in. Man, the stories we could all tell about that place, but jobs were scarce, and pretty much anyone who could leave, did.
So, Linnea was called for jury duty last year. We postponed because it would have been in the middle of the school year, not cool.
However, it's time for her to go, and man, do I have some MAJOR issues.
Getting out of it is difficult, as it should be, and she should serve, there is no good reason for her not to. Except for transportation.
She was called to King County Superior Court. There are two possible locations. They do not tell you which location you will need to get to.
One is in DT Seattle. Disagreeable and a bit iffy because, well, it's DT Seattle and that area is known to be a bit problematic. Should be ok, though. I can drive her to a bus and she'll be straight there.
The other location is in South King County, in Kent. We are in North King County. Options for getting there and back, considering the time of day:
-- Bus. Leave here at 6am, it'll take 2.5 hours, 15 minutes less if I drive her to the bus. Return? 2 hours, and I have to pick her up in Redmond. Total she'd be spending almost 5 hours on transit.
-- Drive her. She'd like this solution. SB it would take about an hour to get there, and 90 minutes for me to get back. Reverse that for the evening. This would have me in the car for almost 5 hours, maybe a bit less if traffic is good, but it's one of the worst commutes in the county, and I would only have the carpool one way.
So yeah. There is no way getting back and forth to the court in Kent is doable at least without major inconvenience for her and me. But there is also no way to specify in the forms she had to fill out that transportation to/from that district court would be problematic. I must admit to being very annoyed by this.
All that, btw, for the princely sum of $10, which they encourage you to donate. Bus fare alone with be twice that (she has to switch from Sound Transit to Metro, which means two fares of $2.75 each way, iirc) and gas won't be far off that.
I understand that it's a civic duty. I also understand that turning it into something only the privileged can afford to do, and they're the most likely to want to get out of it, isn't a great thing. But for someone working by the hour, it's a major sacrifice even if they can drive.
Way back when, pre-kids, I got called for jury duty. My company did not give time off and at that time, you got called for a full week. My options were:
-- take vacation time (and they were mega-stingy with that, you got no vacation the first year and one week the years after that, graduating to two weeks when you'd been with them for five years) so no way was I giving up my whole one week of vacation
-- take it off as 'leave without pay', but they charged you for that, taking off one day without pay would dock your pay for 1.5 days, which was no doubt illegal, but eh, it was the early 90s.
-- work the extra hours nights and weekends, which I opted to do. I got called on a jury on effing Friday, after sitting in the big room for 4 full days, the trial was Monday and Tuesday, so I had to make up 48 hours. That was not a fun few weeks, LOL.
Damn that company was awful. This was also the company that said they would fire anyone who got sick between Christmas and New Years, so yeah, I went to work with the flu (sick as a dog, I was), and I wasn't the only one there sitting at my desk with a fever, head in my arms. One guy was curled up under this desk in a sleeping bag. Almost half the company was out in early January because of the number of people who came in sick, LOL. And they did end up firing two people, one of whom was, tbf, in Mexico, the other, however, was out sick and just could not make it in. Man, the stories we could all tell about that place, but jobs were scarce, and pretty much anyone who could leave, did.
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Date: 11 Jun 2023 00:41 (UTC)I was called for jury duty in Detroit (federal maybe?), but never had to report. I kind of wanted to, because it's a gorgeous Art Deco building. I did have a panic moment on the Monday that would have been my week, because I got an early morning phone call that woke me up and as I was picking it up I was imagining they were going to tell me off because I hadn't showed up. I've had to report to the one in Ann Arbor a number of times - it's less than a mile from the house, so super convenient. The last time I served a half day, and there was an ATM kind of machine in the lobby where you got paid, and it dispensed dollar bills (because we got something like $12? $17? It wasn't a multiple of 5, that I'm sure of). Seemed like a total novelty to get something other than a $20 :^) When I first worked at UM they expected you to report your jury time so they could deduct an equivalent amount from your pay - or something like that - but they eventually decided the accounting cost more than it saved so they switched it so you just reported those hours as "jury time served" and it didn't change your pay at all, or count against vacation. At least not in my kind of job category.