It’s no secret that my mind likes to go on the occasional mini-break. I’d like to think it’s because I’m basically an “Ideas Person” but, in reality, it’s mostly because I’m so very very bored.
Just recently I found myself thinking how people working on the front counter at a fast-food joint could always supplement their income by working as a “civil process server” on the side. And then, when they serve people hamburgers and fries, they can also serve them with legal documents such as divorce papers or writs. See? It’s so obvious, I don’t know why more people don’t do it.
Same could apply to working in a 1970s-style department store, such as “Grace Brothers”, where you can flounce about gaily saying “Are you being served?” to the customers and then, when they say “No, I’m not”, you can suddenly turn all serious and, handing them their divorce papers, say “Well, you are now.”
Of course there’s that small problem of ensuring that the person you need to serve important legal documents to will come to your primary place of employment. You could be waiting a long time, perhaps even decades, if you work in a big city. I guess you could always mail them a “50% discount voucher” for your store, only to be redeemed during the hours of your next shift. But the effort and cost of printing and mailing these might somewhat detract from the simple elegance of the “double serve” as I first presented it.
Also, there would be that legal hurdle of getting them to confirm that they are, in fact, the Right Person before you serve them. I expect your employer might not take kindly to you breaking protocol by saying “Are you [insert name]?” to every woman who came to your register instead of “Welcome to McDonalds, can I take your order please?”. For example. McDonalds are very particular about these things, as a rule. Except at the McDonalds near my doctor’s where the guy on the drive-thru calls me “champ” and says stuff like “Too easy.” Well, it might be “too easy” for him but not for me, okay? Not. For. Me.
Talking of “too easy”, I can only conclude that it would really would be much easier for civil process servers to serve papers to people working in the service industry because they tend to wear name-tags (and thus are more readily identifiable). Also, the “service” aspect of their job means they should be generally more receptive to strangers approaching them unexpectedly – even those cheerlessly waving summonses under their noses.
Anyway, I guess now that you can serve notices over facebook (really rooly truly in Australia and New Zealand), a more tech-savvy Civic Process Server probably would never bother with my double serve solution ANYWAY.
Except I’m still trying to get trying to get my head around how that’s even possible on facebook? Would you send an anonymous invitation to do “The Bestest Facebook Quiz Ever?” to the person you’re trying to serve? And then, when they take that Bestest Quiz Ever (which they definitely would because taking quizzes is about the only thing that anyone ever does on facebook), it consists of one question and one question only: “Are you [insert their full name]?”. And when they answer “Yes”, another screen pops up with the words “Consider yourself served!” and one of those animated smiley faces blowing a raspberry. And then the summons will be automatically downloaded onto their computer, perhaps even with a few megabytes of hard-core porn just in case the charges you’ve got them up against don’t stick and you’ll have something else to get them with.
At least, that’s how I’d do it. What did I say again? “Ideas person”.
Oh, and just mind-numbingly and most desperately bored.
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