Doing nothing with grumpy people is really tiring.

Your Daily Lex.

Day one of jury duty is in the books.

I was due there at 8.30.

I got there at 8.30.

Actually, I got there around 8.20 because I’m me.

I went through security and the thing that pained me the most was how well I remembered exactly where to park and exactly where to go.

There’s a lot of confused jurors because you don’t do jury duty all that often.

The most you can do it here is every three years.

But I spent so long there that I knew just where to go and just what to do.

The only excitement was then you had to get into a line to check in, which I also recalled, where you can either show your green piece of paper from them, which I didn’t keep so I couldn’t, or you can show them your ID, which I do have, so I did.

From about 8.37 on, I was just sitting.

I had my phone.

I had my iPad.

I had my AirPods.

I did some work.

I did some listening to podcasts.

At one point, I was listening to a very funny episode of Hello from the Magic Tavern and I laughed out loud, so I became that weirdo in the jury pool waiting room.

Then eventually, a couple hours in, I’m like, okay, we’re going to call 50 names.

If you’re one of these 50 names, you’ve got to go get in this line.

I was like, here we go.

They go through all 50 names and my name wasn’t one of those 50, which meant I got to keep sitting, so keep sitting I did.

Starting around noon, I realized, hey, I’ve never been in the room this long because I was one of the 50 the last time I was there, three years plus ago, and I got put into a trial and that was that.

I was like, I don’t know what happens now.

Are they going to give us a break for lunch?

Do they have to give us a break for lunch if we were in a jury, in a courtroom?

Of course they would.

They have to give us a break for lunch.

At 12, they have it at 12.15.

They have it at 12.30.

They say, okay, you guys have an hour for lunch.

I go to a place that’s nearby that I want to go to to find out that it’s closed on Mondays.

I go to a second place and it’s at Chili’s.

It goes way too slowly and I scarfed down my extremely hot food way too fast because I have no time left and I didn’t even want to ask for a to-go container because it looked like maybe one person was working there, tops, maybe less than one person.

I just was like, I’m not even going to ask for a box because that could take too long.

I paid through this little gross, germ-covered, germ-encrusted fake iPad thing.

Wolf Down Food got back there on time.

Then you get to wait some more.

Then at around 2.35 p.m., an hour after the return from lunch, they said, okay, you’re all dismissed for the day.

Then people instantly ask the question that you know they’re going to ask.

Are we due back tomorrow?

Do we have to come back tomorrow?

Are we just done?

We don’t know yet.

Check your email.

If you don’t receive an email by 6 p.m., you don’t have to come back tomorrow.

At this moment, I don’t know whether I should be canceling slash moving my meetings for tomorrow or not.

I won’t know until 6 p.m., a super convenient time for business to tell people I have to cancel.

But I don’t want to cancel these things if I don’t have to.

They’re important meetings, including some brand new meetings with brand new clients.

I guess all meetings are brand new, right?

Even if it’s a recurring meeting each time.

But it’s new clients and I don’t want to move it.

So, very annoying and I’m waiting to find out.

But wow, just sitting there doing basically nothing is boring.

And tiring.

And interestingly, they keep the jury waiting area at a really balmy 63 degrees.

So that was also very pleasant.

And specifically, the air conditioning was on.

It wasn’t like, oh, it’s cold in there.

It’s cold in New Jersey today.

And they were cooling down that room.

It’s currently 43 degrees as I record this episode.

And yeah, they were cooling down that.

It was crazy.

The whole thing is crazy and stupid.

And the first time I went through the metal detector, the air tag in my wallet that was still in my pocket set off the metal detector.

So the second time I had everything off, I went through naked.

But there were some people in front of me who were setting it off after the lunch break.

And they were like, yeah, you’re fine, just go.

So, incredibly secure facility.

Yeah, you’re fine, just go.

Anyway, that’s Monday.

That’s what happened.

Plus, you know, four productions of Elf over the weekend.

So let’s all hope I don’t have jury duty again tomorrow.

Because I really don’t want it.

Thank you so much.

Good bye.

Lex.