I was called to jury duty in Alameda County Superior Court last week. If I was lucky I would be selected to serve on a jury. That might get me out of working my crummy job for a week or two.

Jury selection began last Thursday. Dozens of ordinary working people showed up dressed in shop floor casual and carefully neglected hairdos designed to be unattractive to lawyers because no one wanted to serve but me. We packed the jury pool waiting rooms on two floors of the Alameda Superior Court Building. A woman's voice lilting in a delightful Carribean accent educated the seated masses through a public address system. She explained where the bathrooms were, how to validate our parking receipts so we would only pay $1.50 a day rather than $3, what times the court house opened and closed, our rate of pay if we were selected for jury duty ($15/day), and how our names would be called. She ask us to please turn off cell phones and pagers while we waited. Patience is a virtue for jurors. We waited. And waited.

About 10:00 AM the fire alarm startled us, a deafening electronic whine. Mumbling complaints about another delay, everyone rose and wandered toward the exit only to be stopped by the voice that informed us, "Is only a falz alam. Don panic. Don panic. Don go trampling each udda. Is a falz alam. Don panic. Don leave da billin." She repeat this many times at maximum speaker volume to ensure that even jurors dead from boredom would hear and obey. Gumbling about inconvenience and silly alarms, we found our seats again and waited.

A woman near me began pointing out the window, her mouth agape. I turned to see a long aluminum ladder going up against the outside of the building. In a few minutes a fireman, dressed in full gear and lugging a fire ax, ascended the ladder climbing right past our window and continuing on up. He was followed shortly by another carrying a long handled hook.

Jurors started joking to each other, "Should we panic now?"

"No," someone else retorted, "Panic will be scheduled in an orderly way."

The joke was terminated by the entrance of two firemen in towering inferno outfits. They fingered the fire alarm wall units without a word to the seated group leaning toward them in anticipation of orders to move. They left us hanging on the edge of our chairs. I craned my neck to see if any smoke was drifting down from the ladder's destination or if bodies plummeted past, but nothing. A few minutes later, the voice clicked on. "Da poliz haf toll me dat you all have to go out da billin. Please don panic. But you hafta ta leave da billin. Don trample each udda. Don panic. Walk out da stairway and in ta da parkin lot and wait der. We let you know."

The building emptied. People flooded onto the parking area in front. The mob milled round the entrance until a guard came out and shouted at us to move to the back of the parking lot. From there we could see fire trucks and blinking lights on squad cars. Police were blocking entrances to the street and wrapping the building with yellow crime scene tape. Rumors circulated. I bumped into the court clerk who mentioned he heard about a rooftop generator on fire. Others whispered about a suspicious package. The longer we stayed, the longer the rumors baked in the oven so the bigger they became. We learned in the afternoon from the judge, when we were finally readmitted and assigned to a courtroom to be selected for duty, that both stories were true. Something had caught fire on the roof and a guard had found a suspicious paper bag in a newspaper stand in front so the cops called the bomb squad. We'd been told in the parking lot to return at 1 PM so I had hiked out in search of a restaurant. We couldn't drive away because the parking structure had been sealed off. When I returned, the lunch bag was already famous in rumor. A sour old man waiting in line to reenter the building (a lengthy process akin to an airport search, metal detectors, X-rays, patdowns, partial disrobing) mentioned he heard the cry, "Fire in the hole," followed by a big boom. "Probably blew up somebody's cookies," he spat.

All in all, we sat through a total of only two hours in the courtroom, just long enough for the judge to introduce the plaintiff and defense who had faced off in a high tech contract dispute, some bourgeois cat fight involving several million dollars. That was Thursday.

As instructed, we returned Monday to continue jury selection because the judge always has other things to do on Fridays. I wasn't picked, damnit. Mr. SW, head of software engineering where I work, asked me if I played the Nazi or the Communist. After the fire and the bomb scare, all I had to do was mention the name of the software house where I worked and, apparently, that was enough to get me off the hook.

Others ploys to get out of jury duty were used more deliberately. Some people actually did explain to lawyers that they were a little wild-eyed, politically speaking. It worked. They were excused from serving. One sullen college student said he didn't like people much and might suffer anxiety if he was cooped up with them in a crowded room, might get sick and have to run outside. That worked. Another woman with a college degree in computer science said she was Chinese and then stared blankly at lawyers when they asked her questions. When the judge asked if she understood the questions, she simply said no. That worked. The common thread throughout interrogations was established by the plaintiff's question, "Will be you be fair to a man claiming a settlement of millions if the evidence shows he deserves it?" Some answered no because they didn't think anyone should have that kind of dough. That worked. But most shrugged. They were stuck. They really didn't care one way or the other and they knew nothing in the trial's outcome would change their own destinies.

Toward the end of Monday when very few jurors had actually been interviewed, the man in front of me despaired and turned. "We'll be here all week," he whispered.

"What else did you have to do?" I whispered back. Everyone around me laughed. "Just think of it as flying economy class with no movie. The up side is no jet lag."

Another giggled, "If this was 1950, the fifteen bucks a day would be big money."

"If it was 1850 this could have been settled with one big fist fight and we could make money selling tickets."

But the court did pick a jury plus alternates by the end of the day. The judge swore in the jurors.

"You have completed your service..." the judge started to tell the rest of us as some jumped up and stepped to the exit. "Wait!" ordered the judge, "You'll have to hear my speech." They shrank back into their seats. "You have completed your service for one year. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Now you can go."

Everyone fled. But me. I left reluctantly. I was two days behind at work with small excuse and unpaid overtime staring at me. I have no luck.