Monday, Sept. 17, 2012

What are the odds…?

An interesting thing happened to me just a few days after I moved.  Since I’ve been willing to perform jury duty—and have—in the past, the County I used to live in decided it was time for me to serve again, so they sent me a summons.  Only problem is, I now live in a different county.  No big problem.  They make allowances for that.  

All I had to do was call the court to register and inform them that I’d moved out of their county.  I did so in the time period required.  But then…they wanted me to fill out the summons document.  Did that.  Course, there was a hitch….

They also required that I provide a copy of a current utility bill for my new address with my name on it.  That created a big problem!  After all, I had only moved three days prior.  As such, I didn’t have any such bill for my new address.  To compound problems, I wouldn’t get one for near a month—waaaaaaay outside the court’s response time I was required to adhere to.

Hmmm….

I spent my free time last week making phone calls, trying to figure a workaround the required copy of the utility bill.  Since moving, the only bill I’d gotten, and paid, was the cable/Internet/phone bill, which, of course, the court did not consider a utility bill.

Hmmm….

By the end of last week, I figured I needed to talk to someone up-close-and-personal to sort through this.  Course, the city civic building just so happened to be closed last Friday.

Of course it was….  LOL.

So I had to wait until today to resume my quest to resolve this problem—my time limit quickly coming to a close.

Standing at the utilities bill window in the downtown Civic building, I explained my dilemma to the nice woman at the counter who was perplexed by how to solve the problem.  Eager to help, she consulted with her boss…who consulted with her manager.  It took a bit of creative thinking, but finally they came up with a solution that everyone hopes will fulfill the required documents.

Tomorrow, I’ll mail the court form along with the document we created at the Civic building this afternoon and cross my fingers that all goes well….  In the meantime, I keep scratching my head, wondering what kind of incredible odds must have played out for me to be summoned three days after my moving out of that County…..