Craig Frilling: “I speak my own language: Frillanese.”

There’s never a dull moment with Field Surveyor Craig “Frizz” Frilling around. Whether bad (the survey truck gets stuck) or good (he’s serving up his famous BBQ chicken), Craig always has a way of improving a situation with his unique way with words.

While Frizz hasn’t provided us a Frillanese-to-English translation dictionary yet, the following are terms that might be included in Craig’s personal language based on past events.

• Water-fall: Frillanese term meaning “drawn to the water.” Craig is always finding puddles, mud, creeks, and ponds to lose a boot or cool off in, even when it’s not hot.
• Cover your ears!: Frillanese term meaning “listen to her purr.” Craig is still waking up the neighbors starting up his classic 1989 GMC Safari van, which is still [barely] running!
• S’up?: Frillanese term meaning “Frizz is in da house!” Craig certainly has a way to make something slightly dreaded a little more enjoyable or flash a smile to brighten our days.
• Frizz-ability: Frillanese term meaning “willingness to help.” Craig is always lending a hand, and he’s often first to show up when help is needed.

Really, without Craig’s Frizz-ability, Choice One wouldn’t be the same. Not only would the rest of us have to lift more awkward, heavy things alone, shovel more sidewalks, and eat sub-par chicken at company picnics, we’d be without Craig’s sense of humor and bigheartedness, too. Thanks Craig, for making Choice One a Frizz-tastic place to be!

Matt Hoying: “Sammy couldn’t get Justin and Frizz to do it right, so she had to just do it herself.”

Sometimes, you just need to step in and show someone exactly what’s needed. Our graphic designer Sammy Selby doesn’t typically work on a Choice One field survey crew, but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t show co-op Justin Puthoff and field surveyor Craig “Frizz” Frilling how it’s done.

Like Sammy, our surveyors are super versatile. They attract business with their good looks. They aren’t afraid to get wet, dirty, or cold. They keep our sidewalks safe when it snows (but do struggle a little with mud). Heck, they even pose for Choice Mindset photos without [much] complaining again, and again, and again.

We’re sure Sammy would be a great surveyor, but we think for now she’ll stick with graphic design—open-toed shoes probably aren’t ideal for some construction sites. Thanks, Sammy, for being willing to step in to show Justin and Frizz how to do things just right for the camera. If nothing else, you’re helping us be able to keep featuring them in Mindsets!

Are you or someone you know as versatile and tough as our field survey folks? Join us!

Brittany Clinehens: “Dang it! I knocked over the unicorn again!”

We’ll jump on the cliché of “Christmas in July” to present you with yet another random Choice One situation from this past December (we have so many there’s a backlog). For the 2022 Christmas office decorating contest, the front “pod” of Choice WONers (because you all voted and picked their pod as the best decorated!) created quite the winter wonderland that included a glittery, winged, twinkly-light-lit unicorn. And Brittany (far left in the photo) kept knocking it down every time she trotted past.

We get it, Brittany, there were dangling snowflakes to dodge and balloon clusters to evade, and dang it, that unsteady unicorn was hard to avoid (at least by Brittany…) Brittany is typically not clumsy (that designation typically applies to Nick Selhorst and Nick Sanders), but for whatever reason, she and the unicorn couldn’t keep out of each other’s way. Perhaps Brittany’s love of Christmas drew her and the unicorn together. Or maybe it was the somewhat questionable construction of the unicorn.

Like our Christmas décor, we at Choice One often end up being a unicorn: each day we choose to change what people expect from the typical business. So whether it be in December or July, we hope that when Brittany (or any of us) stumble into you, you always enjoy our unique style of twinkly-light-lit magic!

Megan Bornhorst: “Peace, Lily.”

Remember how Megan saved the office peace lily? Well, we officially transported half of it from Sidney to Loveland (with Megan’s fitting words of farewell). And, thanks to Jacqui Lohman (pictured, left, with Brittany Clinehens, right), it has made its way to a Cincinnati-area latitude.

What will the peace lily think of its new location? Sometimes a change in location brings new perspective. For instance, when Megan climbed on a desk to scare Jack, she probably had a new perspective of his terror. (Brittany had a similar new perspective of Ryan Bruns’s terror last October…) When Kaye climbed up the supply closet shelves to find something at the top, she saw the closet as a whole new, dusty adventure. Heck, even just travelling a few towns away helped Andy and Craig get a whole new perspective on a “novel-tea.”

Since plants can’t share their feelings, we just hope they both live, regardless of location or perspective. Good luck, lilies! For, as in the wise words of Nick Selhorst, “If Jacqui doesn’t water it, it will die.”

Ryan Lefeld: “Tic-tac-toe, three Jeffs in a row.”

If you don’t know these three Choice One musketeers, left to right, meet Jeff Puthoff, Jeff Kunk, and Jeff North. When they randomly sat together for a company meeting, Ryan Lefeld (another first name we have at least three of) noticed and pointed out this winning three-in-a-row.

So many good things come in threes—breakfast, lunch, and dinner, Goldilocks’s three bears, stooges… and our trio of Jeffs is no different. These three have been a staple of our company for almost its entirety. Indeed, Puthoff is one of the original Choice One founders (i.e. he’s old), and both Kunk and North began at Choice One shortly after its founding in 1994 (again… old). More recently, we’ve added a fourth Jeff (McMullen), and other than the fact that he’s a passionate Pittsburgh Steelers fan, he’s just as terrific as the first three Choice One Jeffs.

All joking aside (mostly because we don’t know which Jeff is the setup, the punchline, or the delivery of the joke), without our lineup of Jeffs, Choice One probably wouldn’t be the company it is today. From the traffic signals’ red, yellow, and green trifecta, to the sturdy survey tripods, we thrive on the power of “threes” in our industry, and at Choice One, the pictured Jeffs are certainly one… er… three of a kind!

Wes Goubeaux: “Working on two vacations today.”

It’s a pretty great situation to be a project surveyor. They are taking vacations. Every. Single. Day.

Ok, ok, so maybe Allen Bertke, Ryan Francis, Wes Goubeaux, and Jesse Waggoner (several of our project surveyors pictured above), are not hitting the beach or touring a landmark. But they work daily on vacations… a.k.a. vacation plats. If you’re not familiar, a vacation plat is a legal document/exhibit created when an existing right-of-way (e.g., where a road goes) is “vacated” and therefore is no longer publicly accessible property. To make this happen, our project surveyors—the folks drawing up the official legal documents—spend time each day “vacationing” in places like the alleyways, industrial parks, and open fields of exotic destinations like Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. How glamourous!

Guess what! We need MORE full-time “vacationers,” so if you know someone, send them our way! We can promise not only regular “vacations” but occasional “encouraging” banter, always innovative coworkers, and all the Skyline cheese coneys you can eat—at least in one hour!