Picture a glass jar, a bag of stones and a bag of small pebbles. If I told you that all the rocks would fit in the jar, how would you start to fill it? I’ll save you some time. The rocks won’t fit if you start with the small pebbles. The stones take up the most room and should be placed in the jar first. The small pebbles can be poured in, moved around and shifted to fill in the cracks to make your jar full.
Take one more imaginary step with me. Suppose that jar is your life, and those stones and pebbles are the values you hold in high esteem. If you start with the small things, you won’t have enough space in your life for the big-ticket items. My priorities are the Lord, my family and our community. What are your rocks? Would you want to give up one of your large stones to make time for the small things? Just like the analogy, the small pebbles will fit too. It just takes some forethought to prioritize what really matters and fill your cup in the right order.
For the past 80 years, your co-op has identified our biggest rock as our members. You have always been and always will be the priority at YEC. From finding a way to bring electricity to your homes in 1941 to researching a way to provide high-speed internet to the unserved and underserved in our territory, we are always looking out for you. Some of our other large stones are service, safety, reliability, integrity and trust. We focus our energy on prioritizing these business practices so that your energy service exceeds your expectations. As we press pause to evaluate our own lives, we encourage you to help YEC do the same. Help us make sure we’re still on the right track by participating in the American Customer Satisfaction Index survey. We want to hear from you, our top priority, and the biggest stone in our jar.
Speaking of filling vessels, you can learn about one of our oldest members and the pottery she and her family have been making for years. She also shares with us her memory of when the lights came on nearly 80 years ago. As we enter the new year, I encourage you to evaluate your rock collection and take away the importance of love from Mrs. Plyler. I wish you and your family well this holiday season. Merry Christmas!
Sincerely,
Paul Basha
President and Chief Executive Officer
Holiday closings
YEC offices will close to celebrate Thanksgiving on Nov. 26 and 27 and Christmas on Dec. 23 (closing at noon), 24 and 25. Crews will be on standby in the event of an outage. YEC wishes you and your family a healthy, safe and happy holiday season. Merry Christmas from your co-op!
*To submit the survey anonymously, download, print, and complete the PDF form below – or clip the survey from the November/December edition of South Carolina Living magazine – and either mail it in with your bill payment, drop it by one of our 
The results are in and your co-op came out on top. Thank you for participating in our recent customer satisfaction survey and providing feedback to help us continue reaching new service goals. As always, YEC is looking out for you. That’s why we asked for your feedback to compare the service you receive from YEC against all industries in America. Compared to all publicized ACSI scores in every industry in 2018, your cooperative has the best, with a score of 94–and that’s because of you.
It’s all part of a day’s work!
The ACSI is one of the most recognized measures of customer satisfaction for more than 230 companies in 47 industries and 10 economic sectors, as well as over 100 services, programs, and websites of federal government agencies. The industries include utilities, hotels, wireless phone and cable TV companies, and airlines. The ACSI benchmarks are a national indicator of the economic health of the U.S.