"Be Prepared"

"What happened to the Canteen?! It's like a grocery store before a blizzard."

- Greg Albers

You know how it is: the weatherperson reports that a "blizzard" (read: two to four inches of snow) is coming, and everyone rushes out for groceries in a panic in case they can't get out of the driveway for three days. The last to the store might find that all the staples--bread, milk... beer--are gone, and that poor sap is left to choose between a questionable jar of pickled eggs and a dusty case of Milwaukee's Best Light (unsurprisingly, one of Tony's favorite beers, not because of taste, but because of frugality).

Brian Barhorst operates the Canteen here at Choice One, an honor system "vending machine" that gets a little barren occasionally. Since we all know that Brian hikes Canteen pricing up for profits to fund personal trips to tropical places, we know he's not unprepared (for fear that he might lose a sale to the gas station down the road). He just hasn't been to Sam's Club in a while.

Being prepared for every outcome is impossible (and exhausting), so at Choice One we try to act as a Boy Scout would, and pack our pocket knife and matches: responsiveness, a sensible, realistic outlook, and lessons from past experiences.

Now, if only that Canteen was stocked with some of that dusty Milwaukee's Best Light today so that Tony wouldn't have to drive down to the local carryout.

The Easy Connection

“It’s the easy connection that’s leaking!”

- Tony Schroeder

The new coffeemaker at Choice One has been a bit of a…challenge, we’ll say, to install. Our resident plumber, Tony, isn’t the most experienced, but who knew hooking up a coffeemaker would entail so many trips to the hardware store? (If you’ve tried to plumb something yourself before, you may agree with Tony’s further statement: “No matter how many parts you buy beforehand, you NEVER have the right one.”)

Often, tasks that are supposed to be “easy” are the most challenging: think of the top competitor losing to the supposed-to-be-terrible, 12^th-seeded NCAA basketball team (there’s a little free advice for your bracket next week, my friends). Sometimes the easy connection leaks because making that connection is taken for granted.

For instance, Choice One has designed hundreds of projects, but each one needs specific details and attention, even the “easy” ones. We can’t design cookie-cutter projects for the sake of time or laziness, because that’s when the “easy” details are missed. We circumvent this phenomenon by having plans reviewed by engineers not involved in the day-to-day design to look for obvious “leaks.”

Thankfully for Tony’s sanity (and ego), the coffeemaker is now up and running. (As you can imagine, every affected employee gave Tony a hard time about his ineptitude at plumbing. And the lack of coffee.) And thankfully for those of us who sit near said coffeemaker, it’s up and running without any faulty water valves thrown in frustration.