my tax dollar goes to waste

Yesterday, I received not one, but TWO jury summons in the mail. I thought this was weird, so I opened both and both summons have the same date but a different courthouse. I'm thinking, "what the heck, how am I supposed to be in two places at once, and why on earth would they think I have the powers to do so?" Upon closer examination of the summons, I realized a comma was the culprit. One summons had my name as "Le, Quyen Thi" and the other summons had my name as "Le Quyen, Thi." And now I have a twin...I guess.

I don't have a problem with jury duty. And the good thing about San Francisco is that it's only one day of jury duty--once you check in at the courthouse, you're jury duty is completed for the year whether or not you get called for selection on a case. However, in my case, there is still the problem of me being in two places at once, so I called up the Jury Commissioner's office this morning with the idea that it was a simple typographical error that they can fix and the Le Quyen and Quyen can become a whole person again. Boy was I wrong.

First call to the Jury Commission's office: after explaining the mistake in the names (twice, much slower the second time), the lady on the phone finally understands what I'm getting at. She tells me that they pull the names for jury duty out of two lists that they use: the DMV list and the Voter Registration List. She figures out that "Le, Quyen Thi" is from the voter registration list (duh, I filled that out so of course I would know how to write my own name), and that "Le Quyen, Thi" is from the DMV list. At this point, I'm thinking "IT'S THE FREAKING DMV PEOPLE? STUPID STUPID PEOPLE!!!" and she gave me the DMV's number to call and get it sorted out with them because the jury commission DOES NOT have typographical errors.

Second phone call was to the DMV people: after pressing multiple numbers in an attempt to get a live person on the phone (I really hate those automated phone menus now), a gentleman came on the phone and asked what I needed. Apparantly, he didn't catch a single word I said the first time I explained my situation, so I had to explain it again, step by step, and asked him after each sentence if he's still following the story. He looks up my driver's license number and tells me that they have my name as Quyen Thi Le. I ask to make sure that they have Quyen as the first name, Le as the last name and so on. He confirms that it's what they have. Then he gets an idea that maybe my name is incorrect on my vehicle registration, so he checks that out too and that too is correct. I'm on the phone with him for about 15 minutes because he wanted to go through line by line to make sure all the other information was correct, and it was. He finally gives up trying to figure out why the Jury people would think the DMV people made mistakes so he transfers me to the "HELP DESK" to see if they can further figure out where the problem is.

The HELP DESK said the same things the first DMV guy said. Then they told me to call the Jury people and tell them there isn't anything wrong with my records at the DMV.

Third phone call to the Jury Commissioner's office: I got a different lady on the phone so I had to explain the situation again, twice (why can't anyone pay attention the first time?). This lady was evil and only wants to make everyone's life miserable. When I explained to her that I just spent 20 minutes on the phone with the DMV and they confirmed that my the parts of my name was listed correctly, do you know what this lady said to me? I quote: "We don't type up the names, so we don't make mistakes. If we have you down as two different people, that's because the DMV has your name wrong. Call them again and tell them I said that." I wanted to pound the phone on my desk to make her ears hurt.

Giving up on the name problem, I asked this evil lady what she proposes I should do about being in two places at once. She tells me that I should pick one and just show up for jury duty for that courthouse. Then I asked, "Well, since your computer system has me down as two different people, if I show up at one courthouse as "Le, Quyen Thi" what happens to "Le Quyen, Thi" if I don't do jury duty for that name?" Again I quote the evil lady, "You can postpone the other and then serve it at another date, or else you'll get fined for not serving jury duty." And miraculously for her, the line gets disconnected.

What the f*~k, right?