[b00ty4breakfast]

>But the bigger thing is: why would you want to get disqualified from one of your biggest civic duties?

because jury duty pays like 2 dollars an hour and I gotta eat. I know lots of folks on this website are relatively well off, but the entire country doesn't make 6 figures

[bigstrat2003]

That's the only legitimate reason to not want jury duty, but you also just need to explain to the judge that you get paid by the hour for work and can't afford to not be paid for several days. The judge will let you go.

That's also not the typical reason people want out of jury duty. Most people are just lazy, not actually at risk of economic hardship from it.

[ghaff]

Meanwhile you’re probably paying for parking, gas, etc.

Also grand jury duty can be something like six months (may not be every day depending on jurisdiction. Federal may be even longer. Probably no company will keep paying you for that length of time even if you squeeze in some work nights and weekends.

[Suzuran]

The company doesn't get the choice. If they fire you or cut your pay over jury service, or even just threaten to to do so, and you can prove it, they can be arrested immediately. I have personally witnessed a judge issue a bench warrant for the arrest of a retail manager who told an employee that if she failed to get out of jury duty before her shift started that she would be fired. When the manager was brought in and questioned by the judge he tried to argue that it was his right to deny jury service by his employees. He was given 90 days in jail for contempt of court.

[ghaff]

I don’t know. Maybe I could worked with HR for more but our employee manual said they would pay for two weeks and this was a company that was generally pretty understanding about personal matters. Certainly an hourly employee or someone self employed is probably not getting any sort of a deal.

I wouldn’t have been fired (which seems a different case) but being largely unable to, say, make sales calls or other external activities for 6 months I would expect to have consequences even if just as simple as underforming my peers. Maybe a manager would understand and take it into account but I wouldn’t count on it. It doesn’t have to be blatant as in your example.

[hansvm]

If you perform nearly any work at all in a given week you're entitled to your salary, and they can't fire you. They might be able to take away the $15/day stipend from your pay, and there are obvious additional negatives (6 months with limited context and practice of your craft will reduce your performance when you get back too), but that 2-week cap is a lawsuit waiting to happen unless they also forbid you from doing any work while on jury duty.

[ghaff]

As I say grand jury duty is often not every day, you can always take your PTO, and there are always nights and weekends. A company can always keep paying your base salary but, as you say, there could be longer term consequences.

And the case upthread is obviously a retail manager being stupid but I also assume there is no obligation to pay hourly employees for hours they don’t work or for tips they didn’t collect.

[hansvm]

> not every day

Yep

> can take your PTO

You can, but if salaried you usually shouldn't, ignoring any particularly malicious employers and social contracts around the outskirts of the law.

> No obligation to pay hourly employees, tips, etc

Yeah, if you're not salaried you're screwed. PTO might cover a few days, but if you have a month-long trial and need money for rent then my understanding of the law is that serving as a juror will make you homeless unless the courtroom is willing to extend some compassion for your hardship.