"Lost" the jury selection lottery

Today was my very first time I had to go to the courthouse to participate in jury duty selection. In the past, I was always turned away on the phone.

At first it was a little daunting. Never having been in a courthouse (that wasn't last used in 1812) I wasn't sure what to expect.

Well, let me tell you a couple useful things if you ever get past the phone screening.
1) Bring a book.
When you get to the courthouse, you check in and then wait in the waiting room with everyone else until your group is called. That can probably take up to 30 minutes. Or maybe even an hour. If you get there early, that's even more time to pass.
2) Don't worry about getting there on time.
Well, don't be egregiously late, but if you're running behind by a couple minutes...no big deal. The checker in person wasn't keeping a tight watch on the clock and they basically just put you in the next empty group.
3) Wear clothes for an air conditioned room. Fortunately, I wore jeans (wasn't sure if shorts were allowed). Otherwise, I might have been a bit cold in the courtroom.
4) If you really want to get out of it, you can easily just make up a story that shows that you have a bias in the case, but then you'd be lying under oath. Bad karma.

Anyway, if you're looking for pointers to get out of jury duty, I don't really have any new ones. The process is basically a random lottery. 60 people file into a courtroom and take a seat. They'll select 20 potential jurors and then go through each of the 20 with a standard set of questions. Each potential juror that gets excused gets replaced from the remainder of the 60 person pool.
Once they've successfully interviewed 20, they'll let the attorneys filter out ones they don't want, and then if they still have 13 jurors left, the remaining folks not called up are free to go.

So it's very possible that you can just be sitting in the crowd the whole time and never be called up. That was my experience.

But I didn't let my experience go completely to waste. I figured out my juror number pretty early on (it's alphabetical from 1-60, so it's not _that_ hard). I heard both numbers 12 and 14 get called up, but mine was never the case (I had lucky number 13). There was even a court irregularity that occurred (too many hard to pronounce asian names) where I tried to stick my nose in, but the clerk couldn't quite comprehend the situation until the events fully unfolded. Oh well, I tried.

The judge was a humorous sort, so that was a good thing as it kept the room loose. I kept imagining Alaskan DM in that position, and concluded that he'd be a good people person type judge.

Anyway, that's about all I can say about the process. I don't think I'm allowed to tell what type of case it was nor anything else like that. By the end of it all, I was a grizzled old vet wondering just how boring this must be to all the staff members that must repeat the same exercise day after day.

Grocery store deja vu?

Back around the turn of the century there were two main grocery chains in the South Bay.

Safeway and Lucky (ignoring Andronico's, Trader Joe's and the like).

Both had club cards. Both were frequented by yours truly. Then Albertsons bought out Lucky.

Their pitch...we don't do club cards. We don't differentiate between members and non-members (like it was that hard to become a member). Everyone gets our low prices. Well, seeing as how their low prices weren't really that low, I stopped going (more like a boycott).

One day, a couple years later, I learned that Albertsons had change their tune. They now _used_ a club card. Talk about your switcheroos, and of course untrustworthiness. Yet another reason not to go to Albertsons. However, it soon became apparent that they occasionally had good and even great deals ($1 for a box of Dreyer's Fruit Bars?). So I caved.

Then last year, Albertsons got bought out. Most of the stores in the area closed. Some stayed open. I stopped getting the weekly circular, so I had no idea what good deals there were...I stopped going.

Imagine my surprise this past week when I noticed a familiar brand pop up where I once used to see Albertsons stores. Lucky was back. Apparently, threatened with the potential of losing the Lucky brand name and logo, Albertsons' parent company has started using the name again.

And guess what these "new" stores now promote?

No club cards. Low prices all the time.

Bah! Yeah right.