I am currently sitting in the Santa Monica Courthouse Juror Waiting Room.
It sucks.
Sure, they have free wifi, but all of the best websites are blocked. No YouTube, no Facebook, no Twitter, no Stumbleupon. If it’s fun, it’s probably blocked.
But not to worry. If you ever find yourself in this situation, here’s a handy list of things you can do to entertain yourself.
- Make up a back story for the strangest looking jurors in your pool. Juror waiting rooms are by definition filled with extreme eclectic groups of people. Do some people watching and figure out who’s a teacher, who’s a bank robber, who still lives with their mom, and who’s most likely to claim insanity as a reason they can’t serve on a jury.
- Try to find a porn site that hasn’t been blocked by the courthouse firewalls. Consider it a challenge and put your years of non-SafeSearch Googling to work.
- Give yourself a back story. You can waste hours telling your fellow jurors about how you spent your youth touring South East Asia playing bass in an international glam rock band.
- Identify the minor celebrities in your jury pool. If you’re in LA, there will be at least one.
- Read a book. Yeah, I know, you’re “not a big reader.” That means you’re stupid. Cut the crap and read a damn book.
- Start a chain. A shoulder rub train, a thumb war chain, a conga line — it doesn’t matter. Just get something going. Or at least try and thereby convince everyone your crazy. Best case — you start the first ever jury room dance party. Worst case — you get dismissed from service.
- Make a mental list of what crimes your fellow jurors would be most likely to be tried for.
- Make origami with your juror orientation papers.
- Start a rumor that the defendant in your trial is George Clooney. See how long it takes for the rumor to spread to TMZ.
- Write a blog post about how to entertain yourself at jury duty.
photo credit: zzpza
