Cooperative Living August 2019 - 11

TrainingTracks | by Steven Johnson, Staff Writer
The 'Servitude' of a Lineworker
A
s a child, Don Harbuck gazed in
amazement watching a utility
lineman climb a pole and
connect a streetlight in South Carolina.
When the light came on, Harbuck and
his friends no longer had to trek home
in darkness. They could play at night to
their hearts' content as long as mom
and dad approved.
" That just really imprinted on my
mind that this is a great industry, "
Harbuck says - an industry that he's
now part of. And with experience, he's
come to realize there was more to that
lineman's task that day than connecting
wires. It was a matter of servitude.
" I think for you to be a good lineman,
you have to have a servitude attitude, "
says Harbuck, senior vice president for
success at Northwest Lineman College
(NLC), who recently served as the
featured speaker at the 2019 Gaff-n-Go
Lineman's Rodeo banquet.
" When the lights go out in the middle
of the night and it's thundering and
lightning and pouring down rain, and
you have to get up and go to work in
order to get people's lights back on -
that is a servitude attitude, in my
" People look up to the
line folks, especially when
you go out and there's
been an ice storm and
they've been out of
power for three or four
days. We'd get the power
back on and they'd be
so thankful for you to do
that. It makes you feel
good when you do it. "
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opinion; somebody just willing to serve
and help others. "
Harbuck hooked on as a grunt with
Georgia Power in 1967 and worked his
way up through the lineman ranks. All
was well until the late 1970s, when a
recession hit and he had to return to
Thomson, Georgia, from his home in
nearby Martinez to maintain his
journeyman classification.
That's when he determined that
education and servitude go hand
in hand.
" It put a fire in my belly. I said, 'I am
going to get a college education and
nobody's going to ever tell me what I
need to do again,' " he says. The second
part didn't quite materialize - he
admits he was overly optimistic about
not being bossed around. But working
day and night for more than five years,
Harbuck graduated from Georgia
Regents University with a dual degree in
finance and economics.
He moved into training, safety, labor
relations, deregulated lighting and other
areas at Georgia Power and worked
closely with The Electric Cooperatives
of South Carolina on loss control and
safety before joining Northwest
Lineman College in 2010.
" As I got into it, I became more and
more enthralled with the business, " he
says. " People look up to the line folks,
especially when you go out and there's
been an ice storm and they've been out
of power for three or four days. We'd
get the power back on and they'd be so
thankful for you to do that. It makes
you feel good when you do it. "
Harbuck has an unusual title at NLC;
he's senior vice president for customer
success. That's customer " success, " he
points out, not customer " relations, " a
term that he thinks is misleading.
" When you say customer relations, it
gives a connotation that I'm going to do
everything to make that customer
happy, " he says. " In fact, telling a
customer, 'No, we can't do that,' is
better than leading them on and saying,
'We think we can, we believe we can.' "
Instead, Harbuck believes the fate of
the school and its students are tied by a
knot of servitude.
" If Northwest Lineman College is
going to be successful, then the people
that we serve have to be successful and
vice versa. It's a two-way street, " he
says. " You want to look at what can I do
and what can I learn that will help me
be better tomorrow than I was today. " n
August 2019 | Cooperative Living | 9
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Cooperative Living August 2019

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