I have one day off of work a week and this week that one day was spent fulfilling the noble civic service of jury duty. No, wait… I don’t mean noble. I mean incredibly annoying and boring. Whatever happened to the days of good ol’ fashion mob justice? The kind with pitchforks and torches.

Things were a lot simpler and certainly more exciting when a group of saucy ragamuffins would gather and rile up the village to execute a nice tar and feathering for minor crimes. Guillotine justice is only reserved for French kings and nobles. Ever since the implementation of a judicial system, the pitchfork and torch industry has been in serious decline. For those of you who haven’t been to jury duty, here’s how it works.

They send a very boring letter in the mail ordering you to show up on a certain day at certain time. When you get to the courthouse, they stick you in a room full of at least a hundred other slightly annoyed citizens. Then if a trial needs jurors, they pick the jurors at random and off you go to decide the fate of an alleged rapist. But most of the time trials don’t need jurors so they expect you to sit in that juror stable all day and have a conversation with the 50-year-old man that won’t stop talking about World of WarCraft sitting next to you.

The people at the courthouse do make some effort to help you stave of boredom. They have jigsaw puzzles which the elderly found enthralling for some reason. I tried one, but after thirty minutes of trying to put together a picture of clear blue sky, I gave up.

They even have a TV room, but no remote which is just ludicrous. It could be fun, er. I guess. Maybe, while you’re sitting there for hours and hours, the courthouse staff could re-enact little plays or mock trials of famous cases. If there’s a simple, hometowny southern lawyer involved in someway then that would be a huge bonus.

But these ideas were used so I was forced to pretend to sleep for the entire day so the creepy, old super geek wouldn’t talk to me. And when the staff announced that we were excused for the day, I was out the door before she could even finish the sentence.