28 Jun Gravity
“Tyler, can you change your name to ‘Newton’ for the summer? That way we can have ‘Olivia Newton-John’ all working next to each other in one office.”
– Andy Shuman
Calling Tyler “Newton” wouldn’t be much of a stretch (and not just because he’s a self-proclaimed genius). We have several nicknames here, although some are not very self-explanatory:
- “Barney” – Brian Barhorst acquired this nickname long before the inception of Choice One. He claims he doesn’t remember where it came from, but that he was given the nickname in the third grade. Anyhow, with three Brians, it’s an obvious way to single him out. In fact, many of our clients call him “Barney” as well. And no, the nickname has nothing to do with the singing purple dinosaur, but sometimes we question it.
- “M. John” – Matt’s traffic engineer persona/superhero name. Faster than a car through a yellow light, he can clear gridlock in a single bound!
- “Not Nick” – If you’ve ever seen our plans, you may have noticed that we tag everything with initials. Nick Selhorst arrived here about a year ago and created a problem we’d never had: duplicate initials. Nick Selhorst’s initials, NJS, were the same as incumbent Nick Sanders’s initials. So we deemed Nick Selhorst “Not Nick Sanders,” and his initials have been NNS ever since.
- “Michael Soft Hands” – During an early co-op, before he was a full-time engineer at Choice One, Michael Seeger worked on the survey crew for a time. As is typical, Jeff “Shorty” North (that nickname IS self-explanatory) made Michael do all the sledge-swinging, and he got blisters–hence his “soft hands.”
Clearly, nicknames here at Choice One generally come from some form of teasing. Basically, if you’ve embarrassed yourself, you have a nickname. Needless to say, it’s not long after you arrive at Choice One before you have a nickname due our general unusualness, clumsiness, or ridiculousness. For, as you may have noticed, we have no “Einstein” or “LeBron” here.