Choice Mindsets

1. First, the award. The Choice One “Best Places to Work” award Dane is holding is clearly superior to any of Mr. Brady’s six Super Bowl trophies or four Super Bowl MVP honors. Dane: 1, Tom: 0.
2. Second, the smile. While Tom looks kinda excited about his fourth MVP designation, we have never seen anyone with a prouder smile than Dane after he ordered and received a plaque commemorating Choice One’s achievement. Dane: 2, Tom: 0.
3. Third, many call Tom The Greatest Of All Time (GOAT). Dane is also a GOAT, and a better one: Geekiest Of All Time. This has been established by his affinity for roundabouts. Dane: 3, Tom: 0.
4. Fourth, the team. While Tom commands his ten talented, athletic teammates with elegant precision on the football field, Dane commands our team of awkward, musically-deficient, slightly-off-beat engineers in the Choice One “Design Your Road” video. Which of these jobs is harder? Dane: 4, Tom: 0.

Clearly, there’s no real comparison here. Billy, we hope we’ve helped you understand that while you may think that Dane looks like Tom Brady, that’s where the similarities end. If you have any other insights about accomplished celebrities who are similar to Choice Oners, be sure to let us know. We’ll take the compliment, as in the past we’ve only been compared to clowns!

In the engineering world, we often talk about the detention and retention of storm water (typically in manmade basins), and it’s easy to confuse one with the other. Thankfully, our surveyor Chris has provided us a real-life analogy to help us remember that a detention basin is typically an empty, depressed span of grass and a retention basin is typically full of water (and probably full of cheerfulness, too).

The photo, obviously, was staged to reflect Chris’s continued misbehavior that once landed him in “detention.” I bet you can almost hear the beautiful sing-song voices of our Loveland staff chanting “You can’t survey in Mason, you have to sit by the basin!” Or even worse (at least according to the perpetually-hungry Brian Schmidt), “You won’t eat Skyline a bit. In detention you must sit!”

Chris, we’re confident your behavior has vastly improved since junior high school. But if you (or any other hooligans in Loveland) misbehave, we know that the threat of “detention” is just outside the doors of Choice One’s new Loveland office. Take note: we’ll be forced to use best engineering practices to decide how slowly you get released.

Remember when Megan gave us all hugs for Christmas in 2013? Well, Wes’s coupon was ruined in a recent water leak. A HUGE disappointment for Wes, we’re sure.

Thankfully, other than the coupon, there wasn’t much permanent water damage. We feel pretty lucky, especially considering the old, priceless treasures we’ve been keeping around here.

• The oldest item at Steve’s desk, other than Steve himself, is an architect scale he bought in 1967 for high school drafting class.
• Lexy has kept an old pocket reference book that she inherited from whomever previously sat at her desk. You know, just in case she needs to look up the area code of the Caribbean island of Montserrat or how to convert butts to bushels.*
• Both Tyler Thobe and Brian Schmidt have the same hydraulic slide rule dated 1987. This is interesting because 1) their desks are about 100 miles apart, and 2) that slide rule is three years older than Tyler.
• Brian Barhorst and Jeff Kunk annually share displaying a 1997 USSSA Softball Trophy from the glory days of the Choice One-sponsored softball team. 2019 is Kunk’s year to feature it on his desk, in case you were wondering.

Despite the coupon being old and damaged, Megan told Wes the offer for a hug was always valid. Yet as an honest gentleman, Wes didn’t want to take advantage of a potentially questionable coupon. Don’t worry Megan—we’re sure Wes wants a hug… why else was he hanging on to a six-year-old coupon?

*And because you probably want to know, 1 butt = 13.54 bushels.

New employee Michael* Kunzi, or just “Kunzi” as we call him, was tricked into helping move a box that Megan was hiding in. And as stated, he saw a shared photo of Megan getting into the box, knew Megan was waiting in the box to surprise him, and STILL came lickety-split to help move said box when summoned.

No, you’re not dumb, Kunzi, we’re just clever jokesters (at least for engineers). Be careful, you never know when we’ll get you. Sometimes the practical jokes are as simple as our recent attempt to surprise the UPS guy. Others become much more elaborate, however, like sending a $250 invoice to the Ohio Governor’s Office (which Kaye still claims was an accident, not a practical joke).

Keep being willing and helpful Kunzi, and we promise you’ll be rewarded (someday) with more than embarrassment. Plus, since you’re new here, we’ll cut you a break: this is your slightly overdue warning that we may have a practical joke or two up our sleeves (though sadly not in our pockets).

*Yes, we have another Michael to deal with—meaning that 8% of our employees are now named Michael.