Try being honest... tell them you are self employed and cannot afford to miss a day... or your bills will go unpaid... works even better if you have a family or at least a wife dependant on you. Rarely will they insist in that case. They never have on our cases when we were called.
Well to be truthful, I have never been called up for some reason. He has several times and the self employed worked every time but the time he had a cast on his leg, then they wanted him to report in... so he said send a car with a wheelchair. An hour later they called back and the judge had excused him.
