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!

Craig Eley: “OH! We gotta try this!”

While visiting the downtown of the City of Troy for a project, engineers Andy Shuman and Craig Eley, along with landscape architect (and photographer) Jacqueline Huelskamp, decided to try something new at a local bubble tea shop.

Boba Tea is not one of Andy’s and Craig’s typical drink options, so we appreciate that they tried something unknown to them and perhaps a bit out of their comfort zone (which includes being photographed…). It’s like the time we “welcomed change” and got rid of shirt pockets. Or when we believed in the unbelievable because Jeff Kunk actually bought doughnuts. And how about the time we “embraced adventure” and wore purple that one day instead of green?

The verdict? Both gents enjoyed this novel experience of strawberries and tea. Keep trying things out of your comfort zone, Andy and Craig. And Jacqueline, please keep capturing these “new” moments in photographs (we promise no armpit work)!

Lexy Yohey: “Apparently, a dog tried to join the survey crew today.”