Sent Packin'

By JL Civi

TTM, INC, LLC runs a profitable call center, but nobody on the payroll understands exactly what they do for their customers. Yet everyone knows what goes on at their two office locations.

Workplace politics. Open floorplans. Employees and managers. Instant messages. Bulleted lists. Rumors and gossip. Inside jokes. Midday parties. Tight deadlines. ALL STAFF emails. Leaked information. Arts and crafts. Meetings with HR. Time off requests. Confusing acronyms.

It's just another day at the TTM, INC, LLC office until someone gets a one way ticket for the sent packin' train. A standalone workplace satire from the DUTY CALLS series of juror backstories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JL Civi
• Release date: Dec 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463774229

JL Civi

Music aficionado and author of the rock and roll time travel novel Timely Persuasion.

Book preview

SENT PACKIN’

A Duty Calls Juror Story

by JL Civi

Copyright © 2019 JL Civi

All rights reserved.

Published by TOWFORM

Learn more at www.JLCIVI.com

ABOUT DUTY CALLS

DUTY CALLS IS a tale about jury duty.

More accurately, it’s a tale inspired by jury duty.

Back in 2008 I was a juror on a two-month trial. One thing I learned is that even though a trial lasts two months, the jury isn’t actually doing two months worth of work. There is a lot of waiting. Way more waiting than anything else.

Waiting in the hallway. Waiting in the cafeteria. Waiting in the lounge. After a week or so you start looking for ways to pass the time during the numerous recesses or the ninety minute lunch breaks. So you hang out with your eleven partners in justice (plus alternates) and talk about anything and everything with the exception of the trial. That topic was off limits, but nothing else was.

All that time spent chatting with my fellow jurors gave me an idea for a different kind of jury story. One where the case is the least important aspect — maybe even a non-existent aspect. Create twelve characters. Give each one a featured flashback of their life outside of jury duty. Put them in the waiting rooms of justice to kill the boredom by shooting the shit. And give them a mystery to solve that requires teamwork.

These flashbacks form a series of loosely connected short stories set in the same universe. They can be read in any order and work on their own, but you’ll find some common references and easter eggs that start to unify them.

One day in the near future each character will receive a summons to serve on a jury, collecting all of their tales