Jury Duty

Yesterday I had Jury Duty.

I went like a good citizen, with hopes that I would be released early!!

No such luck, nope...

When I got to the court house after getting a little lost in downtown Phoenix, I went through security. Anyways, I had to be there at 8:30 which meant I had no time in the morning to eat breakfast. I was a little hungry and to make matters worse the place had an awful smell. I felt so sick the whole time I was there. It smelt kind of like an airplane, and I pretty much always throw up, or I'm on the verge of throwing up on airplanes. Anyways...

I was called in on the 4th or 5th round of Jurors for a trial. We were told to go up to the 11th floor, on the elevator, yuck I don't really like elevators especially when I feel like throwing up already, where they started in on the process of elimination. I made it through the first elimination then they released us for lunch. I had to take the elevator down 11 floors. That is 10 other chances that people can stop my elevator and get on making the whole yucky process longer. After lunch I felt a tiny bit better but then I returned to the stinky building and in the nasty elevator and all the sick feelings came back. I almost lost my lunch. After we went back into the court room and started the eliminating process again I was one of the lucky ones that made it to the very last elimination and then was released and told I was no longer needed. After it was all over and I felt horrible I decided I would find the stairs and take them down for fear that I would be throwing up on everyone in the elevator on the way down, not a very good way to end the day, no!!! So I looked at a map by the elevator which showed where the stairs were, it also said "take stairs in case of an emergency". Another guy saw my plan and decided he would join me. He had forgotten that we were on the 11th floor until we started heading down. It was a little better than the elevator and I could use the exercise anyways. When we reached the 1st floor the door had a huge red sign on it that said, "DO NOT OPEN. EMERGENCY DOOR ONLY ALARM WILL SOUND". We both laughed and thought it was a little silly but headed up to the 2nd floor. There wasn't a sign on this door so we proceeded to try open it. This door was locked. We checked every door on our way back up. We climbed 9 floors before we found a door that wasn't locked. I was completely out of breath and had been a little worried I was going to be trapped in the stairway with this guy and that no one was going to be able to hear us pounding on the doors to get out (the stairway was a little bit away from everything and down in the long hallway, a very unlikely place for anyone to go, apparently because all the doors were locked I guess they assume no one would prefer to take the stairs). We finally got out and ended up having to take the elevator anyways. When we got on to the elevator some other guy got on with us and I thought I would tell him,

"By the way, don't take the stairs, they lock the inside doors."