Hey, Uh, You!

“You guys apparently only hire people with certain names: Nick, Jeff, Dan, Ryan, Brian, Allan, and Michael.”

- Douglass Degen, Drainage Engineer, Allen County Engineering

Indeed, Mr. Degen, indeed. 

Of our 30 employees, 46% of them have the same name as someone else in the company. And if you count our part-time construction inspectors Mike Sovinski and Dan Durham, that number goes up to 50%.

This phenomenon certainly wasn't intentional (and to be honest, we wouldn't mind getting rid of a couple of those Jeffs--we won't say which two). However, there are good things about having double and triple names here:

• If something is "Brian's fault," well, heck, it can always be one of the other Brians, right?
• Buying name-embossed Christmas gifts for each other is simpler. You know, because the guys here TOTALLY buy each other name--embossed Christmas gifts each year.
• We get to come up with all kinds of fun nicknames to tell them apart: Nick and Not Nick; Puthoff, Kunkles, and Shorty; Barney, Goub, and Schmitty; Dumb and Dumber. Oh wait, that last one could apply to more than just two people around here...

The bottom line? If you have an emergency engineering question, then call and ask for Brian or Jeff-one of the six is bound to be in.

P.S. In case you're wondering, left to right, one seated in front of one (or two) standing, pictured above are: Michael Goettemoeller and Michael Seeger; Nick Selhorst and Nick Sanders; Jeff Kunk, Jeff North, and Jeff Puthoff; Allan Heitbrink and Allen Bertke (yes, that counts even though it's spelled differently); Ryan Lefeld and Ryan Francis; Brian Barhorst and Brian Goubeaux (Brian Schmidt, absent). Not pictured? Dan Durham, Dan Perreira, and Mike Sovinski.

"WDG"

"You can't tell he's bald in this picture though."
- Jeff Puthoff

While making edits to a Statement of Qualifications, Jeff Puthoff made a "polite" observation of Wes's head shot. I guess this balances out Jeff calling Wes smart AND skinny a while back.

There's a few other observations we could make about Wes:

• "Goubeaux" is a tricky last name. (It's pronounced "Goo-BO" if you weren't sure.) On top of that, he's from the Village of Russia, which is pronounced "Roo-SHE." What gives?
• His initials are WDG, which makes this Dilbert cartoon really funny.
• Even though he claims to be a life-long Reds fan, we hear he really may be a Cubs fan at heart.

Whether or not his head shot was cleverly cropped on purpose or if it was just a happy accident (Wes isn't telling), we wouldn't trade our favorite WDG for anything--and no, we're not talking about our actual "WDG" Tony. Although Megan might trade Wes for a WDG who likes hugs.