Petit jury duty summons for 14 days - during planned vacation this summer

[Anonymous]

It sounds like this is federal court (DC district court) not superior court. I had a similar situation when called for federal 2 week duty. I just called and they rescheduled for months down the road. It's really not a big deal.

[Anonymous]

Christ on a cracker, OP, calm down! Just CALL THEM. Really. I am a teacher on leave with a newborn and was called for jury duty when my baby was 3 weeks old. I called and got my service deferred to September when I will have child care. Easy.

I don't understand why you refuse talk to an actual person, rather than sitting home and stewing about it and then cancelling your vacation (!?!?). I mean, the absolute worst thing that can happen is they will say no and you are in the same place you are now.

CALL.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP,

I think we all hear your frustration, but it really doesn't sound like you're disproportionately burdened. Is it a pain? Yes, but once every 2 years is pretty standard. Is it frustrating to have to pay for childcare? Yes, but everyone with kids does. Those of us who work full time might want to spend more time with our kids too, but we can't afford the luxury of working part time that you had. Having to lose that luxury for 2 weeks is hard, I get it, but it sounds like you figured it out.

Did the founding fathers envision you paying out of emergency funds? Well, honestly, I don't know that the founding fathers envisioned emergency funds. Even today many people don't have emergency funds at all, and those that don't still go to jury duty.

You need to call and talk to someone. No one here has found themselves in the situation you're fearing. Every poster who has responded has said that they were able to pick a new date. So call, explain that you're pregnant and have a non refundable trip, and see if you can pick a date.

Well put. And since you are so interested in changing the jury system,
OP, maybe you should take a constitutional law class so you can understand how very important it is. Until then, whining about it being inconvenient every other YEAR is just not that compelling.

[Anonymous]

Why the hell are you canceling without calling first?!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why the hell are you canceling without calling first?!

Yeah, this makes zero sense to me.

And OP, if you do call, take a deep breath first, and be nice. Not fake nice, not whiney, not nice with an edge, not nice-but-two-seconds-from-batshit-crazy - just nice. Those clerks have heard it all. They can and will work with you, and often will bend over backwards within certain confines to accommodate you - but if you snap at them, whine, or otherwise act like an child cooperation will evaporate. I'm going to try to put this delicately, OP, but perhaps the reason you haven't gotten as much help as you'd like (and others have) is because you seem a bit - high strung, let's call it.

[Anonymous]

OP, the notion of canceling your vacation before you even call the clerks is ABSURD.

Why won't you just pick up the phone and call them?

[Anonymous]

I think she's trying to say that she'd rather cancel the vacation than defer and have to eat up even more leave when the deferral date arrives.

So sorry OP. It sucks but you're doing the right thing. Don't dip into your emergency fund, don't eat leave, just cancel the vacation. Perhaps the gift giver can arrange something else?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think she's trying to say that she'd rather cancel the vacation than defer and have to eat up even more leave when the deferral date arrives.

So sorry OP. It sucks but you're doing the right thing. Don't dip into your emergency fund, don't eat leave, just cancel the vacation. Perhaps the gift giver can arrange something else?

I appreciate your sympathy. But you and many others are misunderstanding one important thing.

There are two separate issues. One is that I will have to cancel my vacation. The reason I'm canceling is that I have already called. I can put in a request to defer IN WRITING but I can't find out if it has been accepted or not until 10 days before the service was supposed to start. If I wait until then to cancel my vacation, I will lose all of the deposits and have no opportunity to reschedule it. If I cancel now, i will only lose some deposits, and may be able to use the vacation another time. I haven't given up, it's that i cannot deal with the uncertainty.

The second and more important issue is that I will be eating into my leave one way or another. I do not get short term disability for childbirth because I have a small employer. My "maternity" leave will consist of unpaid leave, plus any leave I have accumulated. I've been working there long enough that this is four weeks of paid vacation. If I have to use nearly two weeks of it for jury duty, that means I will only have two weeks of maternity leave that can be "paid leave" when the time comes.

Do people not understand how that's a huge burden? And if so, I wonder how much time YOU took off when you had a baby? We've saved up to basically afford about 8 weeks, four of which would be vacation time and four of which would be unpaid time off. I can't afford any more than that.

If I have to take 2 of those four weeks of paid leave and use them for jury duty, AND on top of that, dip into emergency funds for a babysitter, (I do shift work, so we don't use child care when I'm working as DH is home, this would not be the case for jury duty) then I'm screwed. I won't really be able to take any leave at all when baby comes.

I do think this is certainly a burden, and undue hardship. I'm obviously going to try hard to defer, and I truly hoping the court will allow the excuse but I"m afraid they won't, given how inflexible they were the last time I tried to defer (which was the fifth time I served). DC is really not being flexible on hardship at all anymore, they just apparently don't have enough people, so they'll force you to do it even if you really can't. It's awful and it IS abusive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Christ on a cracker, OP, calm down! Just CALL THEM. Really. I am a teacher on leave with a newborn and was called for jury duty when my baby was 3 weeks old. I called and got my service deferred to September when I will have child care. Easy.

I don't understand why you refuse talk to an actual person, rather than sitting home and stewing about it and then cancelling your vacation (!?!?). I mean, the absolute worst thing that can happen is they will say no and you are in the same place you are now.

CALL.

I called them already. They told me that I had to submit the deferral request in writing and then call 10 days before my scheduled service begins so that I can see if it was accepted or not. I could assume that they'll accept it, but I don't know that they will and if they DON'T accept it and I'm 5 days out from a vacation we were supposed to take, I won't be able to get any deposits, etc back at that late date.

ADDITIONALLY, I have some hope that if I do go ahead and do the service now, it will only be a few days. I have a span of time off from my job (I'm a pilot for a small business / general aviation company and before you assume I'm loaded, look up pilot salaries) between duty periods during part of the time I'm scheduled for jury duty. If it happened to fall on my non-duty dates, then the biggest issue is we'd have to dip into our savings for the babysitting as we had planned on being on vacation with our child. The reason this sucks is that I need those funds to help me offset hte cost of taking UNPAID maternity leave. I don't get why people don't get that this is actually an enormous financial and emotional burden.

My top choice will be if they do accept my deferral and give me a later date that works for me. But my fear is that they will automatically reschedule me during my already short maternity leave, only 4 weeks of which are paid (due to hoarding leave for it) or RIGHT after it, at which point, this would be extremely difficult, financially. Extremely. We'd be living off of credit cards, not just "dipping into savings."

[Anonymous]

Seems like you were still a little quick to jump the gun...as long as you appear to be willing to perform in good faith, the jury office (and ultimately the judges, who control the situation) will cut you a lot of slack. You would get the vacation deferral, because the initial deferral is virtually automatic. And if you couldn't get the newborn deferral, you could either (i) get a dr's note, or (ii) show up with a newborn, in which case you would be excused almost immediately.

Everyone at the court - lawyers, judges, jury office - is on your side here, wanting you to be available at a reasonable time for a reasonable period. I feel for your choices here, but pre-emptively planning your life around an appointment that is unlikely to happen, or you would certainly be able to change, seems hasty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks PP and everyone. DH and I talked it over. We will lose the entire vacation if we wait until 5 days before we have to go to cancel, so I am going to pull the plug. We are fairly heartbroken, but I don't want to risk not being able to do it later. Additionally, I'm hoping to call the number and talk to a live person who can talk me through the deferral process. If I can defer for an actual date, then I'd try to defer for sometime when baby is 6 months old or so and I'm back at work and have had some time to build savings back up. But that would make for like a 10 month gap between being called and serving, so we can't be sure that will work. So....the vacation gets canceled and we just see what we can do to try to avoid eating up my maternity leave.

This sucks.

Why are you being such a martyr? Call first then see what your options are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks PP and everyone. DH and I talked it over. We will lose the entire vacation if we wait until 5 days before we have to go to cancel, so I am going to pull the plug. We are fairly heartbroken, but I don't want to risk not being able to do it later. Additionally, I'm hoping to call the number and talk to a live person who can talk me through the deferral process. If I can defer for an actual date, then I'd try to defer for sometime when baby is 6 months old or so and I'm back at work and have had some time to build savings back up. But that would make for like a 10 month gap between being called and serving, so we can't be sure that will work. So....the vacation gets canceled and we just see what we can do to try to avoid eating up my maternity leave.

This sucks.

Why are you being such a martyr? Call first then see what your options are.

Serious question, have you read further?

I did call. I was specifically told that I must ask for deferral in writing. Then I will be told if my deferral was granted or not 10 days prior to the first date of expected service. Do you not understand the position this puts me in?

I have decided not to do the vacation for another reason altogether, basically, I'm hoping against hope that the jury dates I am actually required to serve will coincide with my off duty days - I actually have a larger than usual chunk (6 days in a row between one flight and the next with only one reserve day) that means I stand a decent chance to have to serve at least two jury duty days when I'm already off-duty, which will reduce my chances at having to eat leave. (two of my off duty days are on a weekend, so this does help completely).

I realize that it's not a super straightforward thing as most people assume jobs are always 9-5 or set. But my schedule is negotiated monthly and as a relatively less senior pilot, I have less clout with respect to scheduling, and very, very little flexibility otherwise.

So to repeat, I'm canceling the vacation because I can't count on the court granting me the deferral. It's not a sure thing and I can't afford to wait until 5 days prior to the trip to cancel out without risking loss of ALL of my deposits.

More importantly, I'm hoping (with no guarantee) that the jury duty dates will just happen to work out with my off-duty dates so that I'm only out the cost of childcare. But even this might not work out. If, for example, I would have to serve for the 10 business days spanning that two week period, most of those fall on dates when I have a flight. Moreover, the way our leave is calculated is not standard. There is a physical impossibility clause with respect to returning to work that applies when you miss the first day of a 4 day flight leg. It's not like I can just boot out the reserve pilot who has taken my place.

Anyway, there is a big burden on me in doing this, that much is clear. But the problem is that they've gotten much less flexible even for people with a genuine need.

[Anonymous]

OP, I feel for you. It really sucks. It sounds like you've made the best choice you can make in a very frustrating situation.

[Anonymous]

Fwiw, I'm in DC and was able to defer when on maternity leave over a year ago now. I offered alrernative options (ie after June 1 or something like that), but they still haven't called me back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I feel for you. It really sucks. It sounds like you've made the best choice you can make in a very frustrating situation.

Thank you. sometimes a little sympathy can go a long way on these boards. I appreciate it.