Flash Mob - Government Style

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It turns out that Auburn has been learning from Manhattan, at least when it comes to Flash Mobs. More to the point, the Placer County Courthouse in Auburn managed to auto-flash-mob itself, when a computer glitch mistakenly sent out Jury Duty notices to 1200 people in the area, all of whom (tried to) show up by 8am.
D'you know how many cars that is?  A quarter mile backup worth, as it turns out.
CBS Local has the details
All because people were responding to their civic duties, showing up by 8 a.m. for jury duty that wasn’t supposed to happen.
“I didn’t realize that all that traffic was going to courthouse,” Ralph said.
“It was insane,” said Kimberly Foss, “and there were so many cars.”
It turns out it was all caused by a computer glitch.
“The alert failed to notify us yesterday afternoon, so the clerk failed to update the system,” assistant court executive officer Geoff Brandt said. The system then goes into default mode, and we were unaware the default mode was to call in every jury panel we had scheduled for the week.”
Ralph and Kimberly were just two out of 1,200 people who were notified. About 800 of them actually showed up at the historic Auburn courthouse.


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