4

You Don't Have To Physically Accept The Papers

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"People seem to think that legal documents are like the black spot from Treasure Island, and that you have to touch them for them to affect you," Vincent says. "If that were the case, then as soon as someone opened their door, I would whip the papers at them as hard as I could, like some kind of legal dodgeball. But no, once I've identified you, you're served. Whether you take the papers in hand or slam the door on me and I leave them on your porch, you're served. I had one guy who refused to take it from me, so I said, 'I'm leaving it on the porch. As long as I've identified you and there's no barrier between us, I can leave it.' He came out and, while threatening to call the police, he kicked it. By this guy's logic, he could touch it with his shoe, but he couldn't touch it with his hand."

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3

Process Serving Is A Very Dangerous Job

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Crystal has a pretty good reason to respect "no trespassing" signs: She's had guns pulled on her. She learned that "beware of dog" is no joke either after a farmer sent his beast after her. Vincent has never had a weapon waved at him, but he has been on the wrong end of a bad Goodfellas impression.

"I had to deliver in south Brooklyn, at a warehouse" he says. "And I had to get the receptionist to buzz me in, and the office was way in the back of the warehouse and upstairs. I go up and see my guy, the owner of the business, and I say, 'Hey! You're so-and-so, right?' in a friendly way, and he says, 'Yeah, I'm him' and I say, 'I have these papers for you.' And he says, 'You come in here like you're my friend? You come in here like you're my friend, and then maybe you get carried out.' I got out of there."

Warner Bros.

To make matters worse, you're not exactly popular with the people you'd need to call for help. Vincent often delivers summons to police officers, because cops wind up in court all the time, and while he gets to do this serving through official channels, the work doesn't make him a popular guy around the station. "By and large, police officers don't like to not be the person in power," he says.

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2

If A Process Server Gets The Wrong Address, You Get Screwed

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The only reason this gamut of fake mustaches and firearms needs to be run is that most courts prefer that you serve people in person, but you totally don't have to. In fact, process servers used to get away with throwing papers in the trash and claiming they'd been served. "They'd make empty promises, take all these documents (to deliver), and then collect money," Vincent says. "Back then, it was just your word."

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Now they're required to prove they made multiple good-faith attempts, including documenting their location using GPS. After that, though, all bets are off. Process servers have several options if a person legitimately cannot be located. Depending on what state you live in, they could hand it off to someone who probably knows you (this is called "substituted service.")

They can even drop it off on that porch you abandoned and let the wind serve you. "If the papers are served at a residence verified by the DMV, then you've been served," Vincent says. "Even if you don't live there, it still counts, because the only available records the government has of your address are there."

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1

Process Servers Witness A Lot Of Death

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Broadly speaking, process servers don't encounter people who are living life like it's a Julia Roberts movie. "It just gives us the statistical likelihood to encounter dead people more often than the average person," Vincent says. "Like the cold open of a Law & Order episode where the body is found by someone, and it's always a different field, people from across all different walks of life. If it were more realistic, it would be nothing but process servers and social workers."

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"I served some papers on a girl, and in the newspaper the next morning, it said she was found dead in the hotel room that I had served her papers in," Crystal says. "She had been naked on the bed. There was heroin, there was meth, there were needles, there were pipes -- I mean, the whole nine yards. The guy in the room when I got there to serve the papers was acting kind of funny, so of course I took note of everything. And I went on my merry way. Sunday morning, she was found dead with a bag tied over her head, and I thought, 'I might've seen the killer.'"

Crystal went to the police immediately, but they kind of blew her off at first. Five months later, the summoner had become the summoned. The police told Crystal that the guy remembered her dropping by, and desperately needed her to back up his story. Her testimony -- that she had seen him in the room, but on her way back, she noticed that his car was gone -- ended up saving a man's life.

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"She had done it to herself," it turned out. "I served her custody, divorce, whatnot, from her doctor husband in Idaho Falls. They had six small children, she got addicted to drugs, and she wanted the children, so whatever that was in those papers apparently pushed her over the edge, because she asphyxiated herself."

"She was very nice," Crystal adds.

For more insider perspectives, check out 4 Scary Things You Only See Cutting People's Power As A Job and 7 Things You Only Find Out As A Lawyer To The Poor.

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