Jury Duty

I'm currently sitting around waiting to find out if two of our fellow Angelinos want to plea out and make a deal or go to trial and face jurors who want nothing more than to be done as soon as possible. It's riveting sitting around imagining the justice system at work just a few rooms away. I think jury duty could be great, but I've never been utilized. I have, however, spent several days sitting in poorly ventilated bland rooms listening to private conversations and seeing diseases passed around one uncovered sneeze at a time. I thought about taking the Liz Lemon approach but I couldn't do it with a straight face. Maybe I need to take my civic duties more seriously, like Pauly Shore.

So at my last job we probably spent more time arguing about font, grammar, spelling, and formatting instead of actual content of our presentations. While it was painful at times, I learned a really valuable lesson. When given a sheet, card, etc. I can spot mistakes within twelve seconds. I was reminded of that today. There was a farmer's market outside jury duty and I bought some streusel from Daphne. While eating I looked at the sticker listing the ingredients and the first thing I noticed was that 'dairy' was spelled 'diary'. It really ruins things. One guy gave me a business card and his address was mispelled-first thing I noticed. A friend sent me a pitchbook to look over and ten seconds in I see his email address in a footnote is wrong. In the business world it's called detail oriented but it usually turns into being critical. It's easy to be critical. Most of the time there is plenty of criticism and no ideas for improvement, which is the hard
part. But people love being critical without having to be responsible for the criticisms-hence the love affair with anonymous postings. I'm trying to retrain myself to only use it in work situations, but it's proving difficult. So, to make up for it I'm giving Daphne a shoutout and letting you know the original streusel is really good.