But the goal and method, I am often told, A World the way a World should be accomplished by many doing a little good a lot, is nice -- but give me an example. Rubber George is one example that springs easily to my mind. I admit it is an extreme example but it captures the essence of what I think I mean. George could not help the way the world is, but he contributed as he could within the reality of his domain. I am always uplifted by remembering this life episode so I present it here perchance you might enjoy it too.

Reference: "Brain Wave Diary" (23-Jul-89)

Geographic Location – British Columbia, Canada.

George – the Rubber Angel

I met George because I had to. George was one of those fellows whose job is niche to the mainstream operation. Because of the excellent and enviable result produced by George’s one-man team on behalf of the Corporation, he lived his working life in strange isolation. I expect management thought, "If it ain’t broke don’t fix it".

In some cases, this senior management approach to recognition and reward would seem neglectful -- but for George it was perfect. He could do, and did do his thing unfettered by "glass house" interference. He was a loner by nature and appreciated his reclusive stature. So reclusive was George, hardly anyone knew his full name in spite of the fact he was a twenty year man. He was known simply as Rubber George.

It had occurred to someone somewhere that George was getting on in age and the reality of his loss to retirement could be an adverse impact to the operation unless we scrambled to "bottle" whatever magic George bought to his station. The reality of the situation was -- George represented a single, critical point of failure in an important area managing an annual budget of millions of dollars. George had a very large responsibility and no one appeared to know or understand what it was he did or how he did it.

To capture or document exactly what it was George did and how he did it so well, became an overriding management priority -- it was decided we would systemise it, we would put it on a computer as a system.

That is how I met George. I was the assigned technical analyst working within the project to do the analysis of George’s area of responsibility. My role was to go and hang around George, noting what he did, why he did it and how he did it. Once the analysis was completed, I was to hand off the result to the systems design team who would produce a computer system based on what George did. This way, it was reasoned, any old body could later step in and be George – just by following the bouncing ball provided by the computer system.

My fist step was to find George and get to know him. It was anticipated he would be more co-operative if his level of confidence was built up so he would view the analytical process as a positive move. The more positive the reception the better the information would be and the quicker the task accomplished.

Finding George was not that simple. Everyone in the field seemed to know about George and he was sighted frequently. "George is always here somewhere," it was often said – others claimed George must live at work since he seemed to be there no matter the day or time. George was single and appeared to live his work.

Reputedly, he had a field office out in the vast operations area, so I found it instead. By the look of the place, George used it less than the privy. Even so, I wrote a note on yellow sticky backed paper and left it stuck to the cleanest conspicuous spot I could find. The adhesive was reluctant to grip on account of dust -- so I put sticky tape across it to make sure it stuck.

The note simply asked George to meet me at the shack at eight the next morning.

By now, I was wildly curious about George. In my vivid imagination he had taken on a super human dimension – so much intrigue and mystery. Was there really even a George? There was a George, of course, and he met me promptly as requested by my note. He said, "Must be important, you double taped the note." At first I was disappointed at how ordinary George seemed – I had expected or rather wanted George to meet my imagined image for him. My idea for an elusive George was much more swashbuckling and debonair than his real apparent self.

George mostly worked out of his pick-up truck, which readily explained the shack. The pick-up was custom equipped to be an office and contained all the tools required by George to do his job. The truck was meticulously kept. No sooner had the cloud of dust began to settle from his arrival at the shack, I was on-board and being whisked away up a haul road access ramp.

Not wanting to die, George concentrated on driving quickly to clear the access ramp as soon as possible. The truck sported a ten foot fibreglass whip with a regulation marker light on the top but that was slim insurance when meeting a fully loaded two hundred and fifty ton rock hauler doing twenty two miles an hour through the same narrow access ramp. Visibility was always poor throughout the operation due to the incessant stirring of fine particulate matter – mainly coal dust. Our pick-up truck relative to a hauler was equivalent to an aluminium pop can to you and your car.

Once through the ramp, George honed in on one of the huge haulers’ and fell in right behind him not fifteen feet back. My eyes had widened in terror and I gripped the door handle with such ferocity my knuckles about popped out from under my skin. What was this madness all about – perhaps George was demented?

George was unconcerned and nonchalantly started to peer through the open fingers of his right hand as he drove with his left. My mouth gaped open in disbelief at this bizarre behaviour, not only was he squinting through the lattice made by his open fingers, he was moving his hand rapidly up and down – all while we tagging along within inches of a fully loaded, speeding, three story high rock hauler. I was terrified and Rubber George insane – obviously. His nickname "Rubber", I surmised, must refer to his brain material.

A minute later George swung us to the right, making a violent and dramatic one hundred and eighty-degree turn in the width of the super-elevated haul way. The seven foot retaining berm of rocks separating us from a two thousand foot drop-off the side of the mountain, seemed to whiz two inches from my side window as we sped back down the way we came. Abruptly, George swung on the steering wheel again, pulling us dramatically up onto a grassy knoll just off the very beaten track. On paved road we would have screeched to a halt, on au natural surface we more like performed a semi-controlled bucking slithering stop raising an angry cloud of dust in the process.

No sooner had we stopped than George reached over his shoulder grabbing a clipboard on which he scribbled furiously. Noting my ashen face and incredulous facial expression, George was kind enough to offer an explanation. " It’s called a running visual inspection of the hauler tires." I must have still looked dumbfounded for he added, "Oh, the hand thing – well it makes a rotating tire look like it has stopped turning for an instant and you can see if the tire is obviously chunked or damaged."

Off we went again pursuing monolithic vehicles like a rabid dog chasing car tires? After a while I was doing the "hand thing" too. We must have looked like a couple of chumps to the casual observer, two grinning tire guys doing synchronised hand thing.

The running visual inspection act was repeated many times over the course of the day interspersed with side trips to the maintenance barn where George supervised giant tire removals and installations. These were TIRES standing twelve feet tall and weighing thousands of pounds. You didn’t work with these by hand – no siree Bob!

Over the next few of days I did begin to understand what Rubber George was all about. In a nutshell George looked after the entire fleet of giant tires used to continuously mine coal in the mountainous strip mining operation. Since the rock overburden to coal ratio was eight to one, eight loads of rock to each one of coal, it was primarily a rock mining operation.

Strip mining is done by peeling layers of mountain away to reach the coal. This results in a very large hole being excavated. The bench method is drill, blast and haul. The location being mined requires hundreds of drilled holes 50 feet deep, 8 inches in diameter laid out in a grid pattern. Each hole precisely placed in the blast area grid. The holes are filled with explosive slurry. Detonation caps are placed in each hole and the caps connected to electrical wires to accept the firing current. The holes explode in a carefully worked out sequence designed to shatter the rock bench exactly right – over blasted is no good and under blasted is no good.

Once blasted the shattered rock is loaded out and trucked to the waste dumps. The process is repeated over and over until the coal is exposed. The process produces stepped benches around an ever widening, deepening hole. Eventually the coal is uncovered and mined. Typically, the process is continuous, operating 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.

To remove the shattered rock, huge shovels and front end loaders load the haul trucks, which take the blasted over-burden to a waste dump located away from the mining site. To be effective several such "pits" are simultaneously mined – each at a different stage of mining, this ensures a constant release of product from under the rock.

Coal has different characteristics and uses, so processing is used to mix different coals together to meet a customers blend specification. It is washed and transported by unit trains to shipping ports for final delivery – usually overseas on ships as a carbonising ingredient in the steel making process. Operating a metallurgical coal "factory" is an enormously complicated and expensive proposition. Due to the giant size of everything and the nature of location, weather, production, processing and transportation it is an extremely hostile and dangerous place to work. Making a profit is primary and production is king. Very seldom does the show not go on.

Haul truck tires are fascinating. Their very size is enough to capture your imagination. Each one is manufactured by hand, no two are the same, life expectancy varies within and across manufacture and the life of the truck operator depends on them.

Each tire costs a small fortune -- averaging twenty five thousand dollars apiece. Each truck wears six of them, two at the front and four on the rear. Tire life expectancy averages about eight thousand operating hours ranging from one hour for a "premi" to eighteen thousand hours for a senior citizen. If you spend any amount of time around these tires they can take on characteristics uncannily like human individuals. They have individual names and every moment of their life is observed and recorded. They are continually given new assignments to wear them out effectively. Young ones do the bull work – rear, outside position wheel duty on the rock hauls. Old ones – light duty on the fronts of coal hauling units. Sick ones are doctored; old ones refurbished and expired ones cremated.

Tire life is at the mercy of the operation taskmasters who demand production, production, production. Tires are strapped to wheels they cannot control; helpless they can be shredded to ribbons within minutes or can eke out a decent life serving their purpose. Like us, tires need an advocate, mentor and protector. Unlike us, these tires are valued by their money cost so each is pampered like a new puppy at a petting zoo.

"Ironic", I thought at the time.

Tire life is greatly influenced by a number of things like heat generated by overloads and or excessive speed or a combination of both. Excessive wear occurs through over or under inflation. Structural damage occurs through cuts and punctures caused by sharp rocks or metal debris. The life of an individual tire is dependent on "luck" but is moderated through sound management practises.

As my time with George increased I realised this was a very special person. He could have just done his job and still be regarded as a "good" tire guy. Through my close observation it was readily apparent to me that George was in much, much deeper than that. Each of his several hundred charges appeared to have very special meaning for him. He continually fussed, fretted and worried for each of them to a degree I considered to be odd if not compulsive – at that time.

By now I had accumulated the bulk of the fodder required to produce a "Tire Tracking & Reporting System" one that could ostensibly ape the essence of what George did in administering the tire program – at least from a clinical perspective. After all, once you boiled it all down, it was a simple matter of keeping track of each tire, it’s life, analysing outcomes and producing various reports required to understand disposition and operating costs. A perfect fit for what computers do best – keep track of facts and process them.

Towards the end of my assignment I had developed a genuine rapport and camaraderie relationship with Rubber George. This in itself seemed unusual, for throughout my time with George, it appeared he had few or none in the way of human connections, George was tire-centric.

George loved and cared for tires.

As it was, I needed direct input from George concerning the intangibles of his role. It is fine to "fact gather" but I would be remiss in my duty if I did not collect associated notes dealing with the human judgement aspect of his work. I discussed this briefly with him one evening as he dropped me off at the shack. He said he understood my need and he would make some written notes for me rather than telling me stuff. This suited me fine and I arranged to come back for the notes in a couple of days.

The notes were given to me in a battered but sealed big brown envelope. I decided to take them home and read them at leisure. When I opened them here is what George wrote in his awkward hand scrawl.

Here are the notes you wanted. I hope they are OK.

Being the tire man is very important. It must be done right. The mine works around the clock going as fast as it can all the time. I must always be telling the production foremen to mind the road conditions so they will fix them and clean them right. I always have to tell them to slow down because it is dangerous to go so fast and it is no good for the tires.

I have done this job for twenty years and I think I have figured out most of the things to do with having good life's for the tires. I hope your computer program can have these things in it so it remains just as good.

Here is what has made this job important for me and kept me interested in doing it good.

Each of the trucks has a good man or woman operating it. There are sixty trucks operating every shift. There are three shifts. That means 180 good people a day need the tires to work right and be safe in all weathers. Since I have done this job nobody as ever been killed or wounded on account of my tires. Each of them people mostly has kids, mothers, dads, aunts, uncles and many kinfolk.

My tires has never caused them to grieve.

I hope your computer program can keep doing this.

"Whatever you pursue gains credibility... even undeserving things."