Civic Duty - Jury Service

I've just come off of jury duty and it was an interesting experience. I have served as a juror in a civil case involving parental rights in the past and that was a difficult thing because we were being asked to decide if a parent's rights to their child should be forever, permanently terminated. Not your cake walk through the park.
This time I was seated for selection during a case that involved extreme personal injury with a mother and unborn child. Ultimately I was dismissed from the selection because of personal viewpoints that would make it hard to be impartial for one of the sides of the case. All of the process got me to thinking about how hard it is to be truly impartial. Some of the jury criteria they seemed to be looking for was personal experience with injury, pain, etc. What a tightrope balance for both lawyers' sides--too much would make it hard to be objective; too little would make it hard to understand the gravity of the situation. Yet we were told that we should not put ourselves in the place of the injured or make decisions from empathy or sympathy. Wow, what a tall order.
The bright news is that I get paid $10 for my time, and my boss can't fire me for having to miss work for jury duty. But my boss can make me work overtime to finish those things that I missed out on while at the courthouse, and they won't even pay me for it. The joys of self-employment. I wonder if there is a union movement for the self-employed representing their rights against their self-employers. One of the strangenesses of life!

I did see this notice for the courthouse cafeteria:
Monday's special : Lazonia and garlic bread
Educational note: phonics is not making better spellers in some parts of Gaston County