Back in the 2010s, I worked my first job as a server at a local restaurant. Around late 2017 or so, I received a jury duty summons in the mail. I’d never served jury duty before, but I did know what was involved (my husband has served a few times) and that I was required by law to serve. I showed the restaurant’s owner the jury duty summons. She studied it for a moment and then handed it back to me.

Owner: “No. Absolutely not. We are going to be very busy that week, and we’ll need you. You are not going to use this as an excuse to get out of the holiday season. If you do not show up for work, it will count as a no-call-no-show, which is grounds for instant termination. Understand?”

Me: “You can’t fire me for going on jury duty.”

Owner: “California is an at-will state. I can fire you for any reason I want.”

Me: “No, jury duty is protected under federal law, and—”

Owner: “Shut up. ‘At-will’ means I can fire you for any. Reason. Bottom line. You do not have my permission to go to your jury duty. You will be here, or you will not have a job. That is final!”

She then stormed off.

At the jury selection a few days later (which THANKFULLY was on my day off), the judge asked me if there was anything that I believed would disqualify me from serving.

Me: “My boss told me that she wanted me to work that week and that if I didn’t show up, I’d be fired. Other than that, Your Honor, I have no problems serving. I know my obligations and rights as my husband has served before.”

The judge stared at me for a moment and then told me to meet him in his chambers.

Judge: “Would you mind giving me the phone number for your workplace? I will handle this myself.”

I gave him the restaurant’s number, which he called.

Judge: “Is this [Owner]? Hi, this is [Judge] at [Courthouse], and I need to talk to you about jury duty.” *Pauses* “Yes, this is about Mrs. [My Name].” *Pauses* “You have no say or choice in the matter. She is obligated under federal law to serve for jury duty.” *Pauses* “Mrs. [My Name] doesn’t need your permission. She’s obligated under federal law.” *Pauses* “No, you cannot fire her for that.” *Pauses* “NO. You. Cannot. Fire. Her. For. That.” *Pauses* “No. At-will employment does not cover that. Jury duty is protected under federal law, and you will not— NO. STOP. RIGHT NOW. Do not say another word unless I say so, or I will hold you in contempt and put a warrant out for your immediate arrest. Am I understood?”

[Owner] screamed the next sentence loudly enough that I could clearly hear it even though the phone was not on speaker.

Owner: “TELL THAT WORTHLESS B**** SHE’S FIRED!” *Click*

The judge rolled his eyes and assured me that the situation would be dealt with. Soon after, [Owner] was brought to the courthouse in handcuffs and was brought before the bench. The judge spent a good thirty minutes chewing her out over jury duty laws in a voice that would have made even a drill sergeant wince in fear. [Owner] finally realized how badly she had f***ed up, and she apologized and reinstated me with back pay. The judge, in return, decided to drop the contempt of court charges against her.

All I can say is that [Owner] got off EXTREMELY lucky that day. Any other judge wouldn’t have been as generous or patient as [Judge] was, especially with her last line on that phone call.

I left that restaurant for a better-paying office job about a month after I completed my jury duty services anyway because I knew [Owner] would eventually find some dumb excuse to fire me. I’m still working at my new job to this day, while [Restaurant] permanently shut down for separate reasons about a year into the global health crisis.

Many years ago, I lived in the middle of nowhere upstate in New York. Montreal was by far the nearest major city. I got sick with a nasty infection. I was, in fact, one of the first people with a bacterial infection that Ciprofloxacin wouldn’t touch. It was bad. I had to drive myself to Boston for treatment, as that was where the nearest major hospital was with facilities to deal with it. I was there for about a month, and I was in and out of the hospital several times.

Imagine my surprise when, half a year later, I got a letter forwarded to me from the court where I had lived in New York. I had an unpaid parking ticket that had been turned into a mandatory appearance for non-payment. At that point, I had moved to the other side of the country and was NOT going back.

The date on the ticket was actually when I was in the ICU, and I had proof that my vehicle was in the hospital parking lot; I originally went in for outpatient, and that didn’t go well, so my car was ticketed there and impounded in the end. Obviously, I was not in New York and had never received the ticket, so I had no knowledge of it, and it could not have been my car.

I sent the documentation to the court, but the response was that it didn’t matter, as I had to show up in person to present evidence, and if I didn’t, a felony contempt warrant would be issued. I wasn’t planning to ever go back to the area, so rather than take a week from work to go fight it, I let it go. 

The only time it ever came up was when I was issued a security clearance, and the agent told me not to worry; they saw this kind of thing fairly often from small-town justices of the peace, and it had no standing.

My dad tells me a story of when he was stationed on the East Coast before I was born. An idiot jerk he knew let his “valuable show-quality” German shepherd act however it pleased, including chasing neighborhood cats. No leash, of course.

I don’t know if, in this case, the cat owner was Dad or a friend of his; he’s told it both ways. But one of those cats was a full-grown but still small Manx cat. One day, the cat had enough and jumped on the shepherd’s back, hung on with her front paws, and beat the absolute crap out of the dog with her hind legs. With claws. This, of course, destroyed the “show-quality” part.

[Dog Owner] took [Cat Owner] to small claims court. The judge was not sympathetic, pointing out the trouble the dog had already caused and that the area had leash laws — never mind the dog starting the fracas. [Dog Owner] had to pay [Cat Owner]’s court costs.

There was also a bit of disbelief that a cat that small had beaten up a dog that size. Both animals were in the courtroom — the dog because the owner was showing off the damage done (and shockers, the dog was on a leash) and the cat for reasons Dad didn’t say, safely secured in a cat carrier.

A few years ago, I was on call for jury duty for three months. We were supposed to call in every week to see if we needed to report. Toward the end of the three months, there was a notice to report.

I arrived at the courtroom, checked in, took a seat, and waited… and waited. A friend joined me. She was a music teacher, and she was worried that she would get chosen as it was right before spring concert dates for her. 

The judge came out.

Judge: “People aren’t showing up for jury duty. We’re having to send sheriff’s deputies out to find people as we can’t start until we have enough potential jurors.”

A few more people straggled in, and they finally said we could start. The defendant and the lawyers came out and stood at their tables. The defendant started peeking back over his shoulder at all the people sitting in the courtroom. About the time the judge came out, the defendant leaned over and whispered something to his lawyer. The lawyer then asked to approach the bench. Both lawyers went up and talked to the judge for a couple of minutes. Then, they went back to their tables and gathered up their stuff, and they all left. 

The judge came over to the potential jurors.

Judge: “The defendant has decided to plead guilty. You are all free to leave. It’s fairly common for defendants to see all of the people here and change their minds.”

The defendant ended up getting a plea deal out of it, my friend didn’t have to miss her concerts, and I got paid for sitting in a courtroom for a few hours!

I’ve been dealing with this for the last three months and it has FINALLY reached its climax. I own a towing company and am currently renting a home within a homeowners association that I was NOT informed of when I signed the lease. My wife and I broke ground on our dream home days before lockdown went into effect in 2020. We signed a two-year lease as we were offered a $250 reduction in rent if we did.

The house has a three-car garage attached to it, as well as parking for an additional two cars in the driveway. I keep my tow truck in the driveway or parked on the street in front of the house as it is classified as an “emergency vehicle” by the state and not merely a commercial vehicle. This means it is not against the HOA to have it in the neighborhood.

We also own many cars as all three people living in the home are car nuts. We do not keep all of the cars at my home, but we do have a total of six cars at the home, plus the tow truck, which means two vehicles are always parked on the street. For reference, the cars we keep at home are a 1967 four-door Chevy Impala, a 1967 Ford Galaxie, a 1993 Mazda Rx-7, a 1994 Nissan Silvia, a 2013 Subaru BRZ, and a 2008 BMW M3. Of these cars, all of the imports have wide body kits that cost between $4,000 and $12,000. (This is important as to the value of the vehicles as well as looks.)

After living here for just over nine months, and as the lockdowns were ending and the world opened its weary eyes just to get punched in the face again, the HOA that we had absolutely no idea existed started by ticketing the tow truck parked on the street stating that it could not be parked on the street.

Okay, I’ll put it in the driveway, no problem. I paid the $150 fine to the HOA after getting the contract from the landlord and reading it, figuring it was best to just go along with it and not ruffle any feathers. Since I moved the tow truck into the driveway, I started parking the RX7 on the street. 

The two classic cars are kept in the garage, as well as the BRZ as it is my project car and I’m in the middle of building a very high-end drift car out of it. The other two people in my house drive the BMW and Nissan every day.

The very next day, I returned home, and there were tickets on both the RX7 and the Silvia which were parked on the street by our driveway. Numerous neighbors were also parked on the street, mind you, without tickets from the HOA.

I immediately called the a-hole in “charge” of the HOA to ask what the h*** was going on. [Head Of The HOA] told me that our “junk” was devaluing the neighborhood and could not be parked on the streets, and he cited a rule in the HOA guidelines about vehicles being in disrepair or essentially a junk status needing to be put in a garage. I laughed, a full-on gut chuckle. The guy I was talking to drives an early-2000s Cadillac that may be worth $10,000. He told me me that if the vehicles continued to be parked on the street, he would have them towed.

Okay, let’s play. I told [Head Of The HOA] that he needed to read his own manual and look at the vehicles he was talking about. Clearly, both cars were not in disarray.

Ten days after the initial ticketing, [Head Of The HOA] called for a tow truck. This is where I should mention that the reason my tow truck is listed as an emergency vehicle is that my company has the county police contract for their towing, as well as the township. When a small-guy towing company showed up to impound my vehicles, I was not home. I got a call from [Small Towing Company]’s owner informing me that he had been sent to impound my cars. (We know each other from the businesses we operate, and I often kick him work when we are holding over a ninety-minute ETA to not upset customers.)

Owner: “I have to tow your cars due to my contract with the HOA, but I don’t have a truck that can tow these lowered cars without damaging them. Can you come home and remove the bumpers so they will go on my truck?”

Me: “That’s not going to happen. I’d hate to look for another towing company to send overflow work to while we see how the courts feel about the impounding and potential damages to the cars.”

[Owner] wisely decided not to tow the vehicles.

Over the next several months, [Owner] called me dozens of times about [Head Of The HOA] calling him repeatedly to tow the vehicles. [Owner] told him that that the only company in the area that could tow these vehicles was my company.

FINALLY, [Head Of The HOA] called my company to impound MY cars. Okay, no problem. I sent three of my guys over in the shop pickup to drive my cars back to the shop where they had been parked and kept for the last month. My wife had started driving the Impala regularly as it was summer.

On Friday, we went to small claims court as I sued the HOA for towing costs of $250 per vehicle,  as well as storage on each vehicle of $62 per day each, AND an additional $3,000 for inconveniences due to not having the cars for daily transportation. I added on an additional $1,500 for lawyer fees.

After roughly five minutes, the judge asked [Head Of The HOA] for photos of the cars, which he handed over.

Judge: “These cars are nice; they are clearly not in disarray.”

Me: “Thank you, your honor. Can you see the Cadillac parked on the street way in the background of the photo, as well as the other five or six cars in the frame?”

The judge affirmed this and asked [Head Of The HOA] about these cars. [Head Of The HOA] stated that they were NOT in violation and even coughed up that the Cadillac was his car.

The judge smiled a toothy grin and confessed to being a car guy and estimated that each of the two cars that had been impounded were worth $50,000 each and that [Head Of The HOA]’s Cadillac would clearly be the eyesore of the community. The judge then dismissed the HOA’s claims and explicitly told [Head Of The HOA] that he was NOT to tow any vehicles out of the neighborhood without police confirmation of their disarray or abandonment.

The judge went further and stated that the HOA was in violation of the township ordinance as the streets are NOT private streets but belong to the township. The judge then grabbed what I assumed was a calculator and started punching away. After about a minute and a half of pure silence, the judge looked up.

Judge: “Okay, as stated before, [Head Of The HOA]’s claim for the HOA has been dismissed. As for [My Name]’s counter suit, I will rule in favor in the amount of $10,100 and $65.50 in court costs to [Head Of The HOA]’s HOA.”

[Head Of The HOA] lost his freaking mind. He went on a rant about communism — what? — and how the judge was the problem with this country, and he went into election conspiracies and every whackjob theory you can think of. The judge warned [Head Of The HOA] twice, and he finally ordered him in contempt and invited him to have a weekend stay at the local jail on the county’s dime.

[Head Of The HOA] will be home tonight as the judge set to release him at 6:00pm. The cars are back in their original spots, and I cannot wait for the hand-wave and grin as [Head Of The HOA] comes home this evening.