Update on overseers, plantation managers, slavemasters (Shaletha Jones, Jessica Lopez, Tom Zubik, Joanne Langley, James Patrick Corcoran)

I had a Zoom staffing today, and Tom Zubik, looking perfectly dapper on video, asked me right up front about having missed yesterday’s meeting for Gus. He was not really trying to figure out why I hadn’t shown up, however. Rather, he wanted to correct my portrayal in yesterday’s blog, of his behavior.

Tom seemed slightly anxious to get his side of the story to me, and I don’t mind amending what I published yesterday. He said he had not actually stormed out of the staffing the way Gus portrayed it to me. He had remained on the line, although he muted himself most of the time (lurking?), until the staffing concluded. He complained about how Gus goes on and on and on, with apparently unlimited details about all his continuing complaints. 

Gus does do that and it can be frustrating. But Gus also responds to respectful acknowledgment and allows me to talk if he notices that I am listening to him. It’s not like two-way communication with him is impossible, or even all that difficult. It’s more like some people consider, or they’re part of a culture which considers, that they are the masters and Gus is the slave. In that context things get difficult indeed, and in my opinion it’s to Gus’ credit: he refuses to be a slave.

In yesterday’s blog I wrote that I was confused about why Tom Zubik would be so upset that Gus was actually naming individual staff about whom he has complaints. I went to the trouble of also naming them in the blog. I probably wouldn’t have bothered, but for concluding from Zubik’s reported reaction yesterday that this is a very productive tactic. But a new theory about this was suggested today, which incidentally supports my conclusion.

Zubik clearly had some priority on “setting the record straight” about whether he had left the staffing yesterday in impatience over Gus’ identification of individuals by name for accused misdeeds. He insisted that he didn’t read my blog himself, so somebody must have told him about it. Maybe one of the people I named (Joanne Langley, Shaletha Jones, Jessica Lopez, Kristina somebody) complained, and Tom felt he had to stick up for his people. 

But the description of Zubik’s reaction as related to me by Gus, plus Zubik’s oh-so-earnest side of the story, were hard to reconcile. Plus, Tom didn’t say anything about anyone else, he only “corrected the record” about his own behavior.

Then, at the very end of today’s Zoom staffing, after well over an hour, an individual spoke up who had never announced his lurking presence: James Patrick Corcoran, the Master.

Maybe now I get it.