The gofer

Sam was basically rudderless when he arrived at the mill, straight from college, for his brand new assignment.

He simply wanted a job, to buy a new car and then, whatever.

He had no preconceived plan, strategy or goal, instead just a job that paid enough to buy that car.

His first assignment was to prepare the timesheets of the maintenance workers for the payroll department, which at the time were sent to corporate for processing via keypunched cards, sorted, read, and transmitted to the IBM 360 for processing, which meant the results would be sent to the keypunch machine, then sorted and then printed.

His immediate boss was the mill’s master mechanic, who in turn reported to the Technical Manager who reported to the Mill Manager. It sounds like a typical, multilevel org structure.

It wasn’t.

If the Mill Manager wanted Sam to do something he called and asked, if the purchasing agent wanted Sam’s assistance with something, he called and asked. If an operations manager wanted something Sam could handle, he called and asked. And Sam knew enough social behavior to know they really were not asking, and he always complied, smiling.

Sam also requisitioned repair materials and supplies direct or from the stores area, produced drawings, based upon his own engineering, or someone’s thoughts about changing something. Like moving a pipe from here to there, or installing a new pump, base and piping. Or rearranging storage of converted paper rolls in the paper storage warehouse. Or finding a repair part in the larger spare parts storage area beneath the raw material warehouse.

The Technical Manager felt he would make a good process engineer, and he did also, so performing ‘trials’ fell into his bailiwick as well, and truth be told it was a welcomed diversion.

Some of those process improvement duties included determining sewer losses, sewer fiber fractionation, monitoring various analog data sets for statistical process control (SPC) by grade and weight, observing and asking questions of the artisans of production, in this case machine and back tenders.

And, OH, by the way, maintain the pneumatic, and increasingly, electronic, instrumentation including changing the twenty four hour circular charts and filing them in the appropriate box in the quality control lab which everyone visited during the day to review operating performance, including paper quality.

As well as filling in during vacations for the steam plant supervisor and the storekeeper Sam also envisioned capturing data that was partially keypunched for payroll purpose as a history of work orders with work performed and materials used. For this he stayed over, after normal hours, to keypunch this raw data, sort and send, receive, and print from the mainframe and post on the Master Mechanics door for the next morning.

Daily schedules were made up each morning based upon, mostly, verbal requests from the loudest squeaky wheel and observed discrepancies by the maintenance foreman and master mechanic during their nearly hourly trips through the mill.

Sam also did a lot of wandering, observing and asking and soon he became the walking, talking asset encyclopedia. When someone wanted information about make and model, Sam was called.

In addition, he acted as liaison with corporate engineering for capital projects being onsite 1500 miles from their offices. And he was also the designated limo driver and welcoming committee for any travelers from corporate, usually engineers, occasionally a VP level. The nearest airport was in another country and 160 km away.

Sam always looked forward to these trips because it allowed him to learn more about ‘corporate’ happenings in the inevitable conversations covered in the two plus hour trip and he was never shy about asking questions nor providing responses.

There were politics, of course, and Sam had to learn the minutia of the actions and behaviors for each episode as he was na?ve to industrial social relations

So much learning occurred from so many different personalities, some characters, with whom he had direct relationships, all with little to no filtering of the information provided.

WYSIWYG, or in this case ‘what you hear’ and ‘what you heard’.

Sam will always suggest that these early years were the most enjoyable of his career and affectionately refers to the period as his ‘gofer’ role. The freedom influenced his future thoughts and goals.

He would later find out that not organizations allowed such freedom across disciplines and that roles and responsibilities were clearly defined and expected to be strictly adhered. Focus upon the dictated task at hand was the sought after behavior, with little, to no deviation, nor questioning of purpose or goal.

Boundaries and borders were not something that Sam recognized throughout most of his career, accepting and discarding roles and responsibilities with abandon, often relishing the orthodoxy.

He did, however, settle upon a mission, learn, preach and practice improvement whether things, people, process or the supporting tools.

Many years later after confounding many a manager, a mill manager, who he greatly respected, told him, “I’ve finally figured you out, you are not ambitious and that, honestly, confused me, you do however, have a mission and I’m convinced you will succeed or die trying.”

Sam had never or has ever received a greater compliment.

“When setting out on a journey do not seek advice from those who have never left home.” ~ Rumi