Rural Missouri - March 2021 - 5

Missouri
RURAL

RM | PERSPECTIVES

No 9-to-5 job

Volume 74 | MARCH 2021 | Number 3
EDITORIAL STAFF:
Jim McCarty, editor
jmccarty@ruralmissouri.coop
Paul Newton, managing editor
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Heather Berry, associate editor
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Zach Smith, field editor
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Rural Missouri (ISSN 0164-8578) (USPS 473000) is published monthly by the Association
of Missouri Electric Cooperatives, 2722 E.
McCarty Street, Jefferson City, MO 65101, Caleb
Jones, CEO/executive vice president. Individual
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Circulation of this issue: 571,757

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by Caleb Jones
cjones@amec.coop

'm not going to lie to you, a few
Fridays back, I snuck out of the
office early to spend time with the
kids. Our member-owners probably didn't get a full day's worth of
work out of me - but for some things
you just have to make time.
I'd like to think I was following one
of our co-op principles - Education
and Training. My kids needed to learn
the fundamentals of building a good
snowman and how to throw a snowball accurately. That being said, they
also know that co-op work doesn't end
when their dad leaves the office ... I
may have slipped in a few text messages when they weren't looking.
In fact, from the beginning, a job
at an electric co-op has never been
a 9-to-5 option. You can bet that as
electric lines were spread across rural
Missouri, those men and women who
signed up friends and neighbors for
service missed quite a few suppers at
home. Not much has changed today.
I'm sure there are times when you see
local co-op employees working after
hours and wonder, " Is this what other
electric utilities do? "
It's not - and that's because electric co-ops don't follow the typical
path of other utilities. We do things
different because we are different.
Most importantly, co-ops were never designed to make a profit. If rural
Missouri was going to get electricity,
profit wasn't an option. Early utilities
discovered the hard way there's not
much money in serving electricity
where cows outnumber people.
Then there are the seven cooperative principles your co-op follows:
1. Open and Voluntary Membership
2. Democratic Member Control
3. Members' Economic Participation
4. Autonomy and Independence
5. Education, Training & Information
6. Cooperation Among Cooperatives
7. Concern for Community
You can see these principles at
work in everything our co-op does.
Whether it's helping their neighbors
get broadband or their local school

My kids, Max and Charlie, learned a few lessons
in cooperation building this snowman.
district with an electric school bus,
co-ops are there to help their community. During the past year, co-ops
worked hard to make sure their member-owners could participate in the
business of their co-op. This year we
saw virtual meetings, drive-thru voting and many other changes to make
sure we members still had a voice in
how our cooperative runs.
This time of year, I don't know
where we would be without Cooperation among Cooperatives. Co-ops
don't get to pick when the lights go
off. When a major storm rolls through
Missouri, a co-op's job is to get the
lights back on as soon as humanly
possible. Thankfully, there's always
an army of employees from the cooperative family who come to the rescue
when a co-op is overwhelmed.
At the end of the day, your electric cooperative's goal is the same
goal that it has had since 1936 - to
improve the quality of life for rural
Missouri. And that's a job that doesn't
end at 5 o'clock.
Caleb is the executive vice president
and CEO of the Association of Missouri
Electric Cooperatives and a member of
Boone Electric Cooperative.
MARCH 2021 | RURALMISSOURI.COOP

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Rural Missouri - March 2021

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