Sgt. Vincent Trent knew that what he heard on the phone was more than a laughing matter … but when your mother is Gladys Jubilee (of-the-mountain) Trent, you already know how certain stories in the family are going to end … so he just broke out laughing because he knew before he heard the end...
“I keep tellin' y'all that if you have Jubilee-of-the-mountain in you anywhere, you are basically going to be unemployable for the protection of other people,” Mrs. Gladys Jubilee Trent was telling her niece, Alma Jubilee Simmons, on speaker phone. “You gotta understand who you are in the state where slavery started and Hubert Jubilee shot himself and his entire family out of it and kept it moving! I keep tellin' y'all that when the uninformed start trying to treat you like a corporate slave, I already know what y'all are going to do!”
“You were right, Auntie,” Alma said. “See, I had been documenting this fool's behavior for three whole months before he asked me to get the coffee for everyone again – he must have thought it was 1820 or something because we have the exact same job title. I told him before to stop with that, but I knew he was going to pull something in front of the execs to show how big and important he is.”
“See, that's Jubilee-of-the-mountain thinking – we get you from a long way off!” Mrs. Jubilee Trent said, and that's where Sgt. Trent started laughing.
“I already know this man doesn't have a job today,” he said.
“Of course not,” Alma and Mrs. Jubilee Trent said in perfect harmony, which caused the sergeant to laugh even harder.
“So, anyway, he walks up and orders me to get the coffee,” Alma said, “and I just looked around like we had missed somebody. He repeated his order a little louder, and I just said, 'I'm not your maid, but if she's running late, you can get the coffee you want.' He turned red as a beet, and the execs all stared as I left him right there and started putting out my part of the presentation. By the time I was finished, they realized that of us two, I was the most competent – no surprise, since I know the difference between a maid and a professional colleague. He could hardly get through his half of the presentation, he was so mad – just shaking like a leaf. I just sat there and just documented the latest, and then just quietly handed off a copy of my whole folder on that to the CEO, along with a note from my lawyer. Mr. I'm-Already-Fired-But-I-Don't-Know-It-Yet just thought I was handing over printed copies of my presentation.
“So, we get back to our offices, and as soon as we seem to be alone, this man just goes off on me – I mean he reached back to 1820 and got all the words, not knowing the CEO had followed us just to see and called security immediately. They got right up behind him along with the CEO and waited until he needed to take a breath – 'You're fired,' the CEO said at that moment. 'You have 30 minutes to pack your desk.' So now, all of the sudden I don't matter – this man starts begging for his job and is down on his knees, talking about his car payment and his house and his wife and his mistress –.”
“Why do fools fall in lust?” Mrs. Jubilee Trent said, and Sgt. Trent was gone laughing again.
“All the CEO said at the end of two minutes of that was, 'You have 28 minutes now,' and then turned to security. 'You have one job. Make sure Mr. Fir leaves on time, relieved of carrying anything not on that desk.' He then turned and said to me, 'Take an hour's lunch on the company, Ms. Simmons, and then meet me in my office.' By the time I got back, Mr. Fir was long gone. The CEO and the chief of human resources both had a chance to look at my folder, and were willing to do just about whatever I wanted … so I took a very generous early retirement package so what's in that folder about Mr. Fir in addition to the day's behavior stays in the folder and doesn't enter public knowledge. He'll never work again in the industry. I won't either, but hey: I wrote my own ticket out!”
“Well, of course, Alma,” Mrs. Jubilee Trent said. “Learning skills and making people do right by us for the privilege of having us peacefully commune with them is all we do. That's why we are unemployable; we can work with you, but the minute you try to be the boss, we show you you're not. Forever living on jubilee: that's in your blood, Alma. That's your heritage. Use the money and make opportunity for your family, because otherwise, too many Mr. Firs are going to lose their jobs in this economy and lose their cars, houses, wives, and mistresses coming up against us. We gotta always remember how we roll.”
Sgt. Trent was rolling laughing … the military was just about the only institution disciplined and focused enough to not have Jubilees and their offshoots wrecking civilian corporate shop when necessary, and the Jubilee-of-the-mountain elders just kept up the programming constantly.
“So, um, it's good that we have businesses,” eleven-year-old Velma Trent was saying to her big sister days-from-18-year-old Vanna, “because apparently the corporate world is not ready for us.”
“Ain't it the truth, Velma,” Vanna said, “ain't it the truth.”
