Me a juror? Not this time. But then again...

Our county has a pretty nice jury service system. Once summoned, you can either report old school style on the specified date and time, or you can answer a short questionaire online and give the court contact information in case they need to contact you for further service.

I got a summons last summer and I went through the online system. After submitting the form I had to remain available for jury selection on a certain date. I think you have 24 hours after they contact you by phone or email to report for jury duty. Since The Boss Lady was off for the summer, it was no problem. And with the online setup, doing my civic duty was painless. For the record, I never got called up to the majors...

I got another summons last week. This time though, the wife is in the middle of a semester, so I claimed an online exemption for being the stay at home parent of a child under 10.

A few days later I got a follow up form, stating that my request had been approveed but that I would need to report on a postponed date. The only problem is that it is the EXACT SAME date, time and location that I was originally scheduled to appear. So I called the court today to find out what I should do.

Now I am having a hard time dealing with the amount of crap that I was given on the phone. Surely they deal with parents of preschoolers on a daily basis. And I kind of doubt that they give everyone of them a hard time.

I was quizzed about where I work. "Uh, nowhere." When I work my other job. "Uh, I don't." Where the kids go to day care. "Uh, nowhere." When the kids go to preschool. "Uh, didn't I just answer that."

But the last one really got me annoyed. "Where does the mother work? "Uh, what difference does that make?" "Well sir, I just need to know for our records." " Well, she is an astronaut living on the Space Station. She will be there for another fourteen months, three weeks and five days"

So maybe I can report for jury service after that...