{"id":1577,"date":"2025-03-13T20:34:13","date_gmt":"2025-03-13T20:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/?p=1577"},"modified":"2025-03-31T18:48:06","modified_gmt":"2025-03-31T18:48:06","slug":"serving-smiles-in-suffolk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/2025\/03\/13\/serving-smiles-in-suffolk\/","title":{"rendered":"Serving Smiles in Suffolk: Bonding Over Fish Tacos"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"intro\">A Recipe for Team Bonding<\/p>\n<p data-pm-slice=\"1 1 []\"><strong>A regular Friday took a flavorful turn when IES Virginia team members whipped up fresh fish tacos.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-1583 size-medium-large\" src=\"https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/03\/Website_Newsroom_IESVA-Taco-Friday-600x420.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"420\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/03\/Website_Newsroom_IESVA-Taco-Friday-600x420.png 600w, https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/03\/Website_Newsroom_IESVA-Taco-Friday-300x210.png 300w, https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/03\/Website_Newsroom_IESVA-Taco-Friday-768x538.png 768w, https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/03\/Website_Newsroom_IESVA-Taco-Friday-500x350.png 500w, https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/03\/Website_Newsroom_IESVA-Taco-Friday-254x178.png 254w, https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/03\/Website_Newsroom_IESVA-Taco-Friday-876x613.png 876w, https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/03\/Website_Newsroom_IESVA-Taco-Friday.png 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/>At our Suffolk office, Juston Ellis, Division Safety Manager, and, Ray Thompson, Talent Acquisition Specialist, brought Taco Tuesday energy into the office on a Friday with homemade guacamole and fish tacos. \u201cA family that works together, eats together!\u201d said Ellis. Food, a globally recognized love language, has influenced team bonding at IES Virginia since 2022. \u201cA couple years ago, during our Thanksgiving Potluck, everyone was asked to bring in a dish,\u201d says Juston, \u201cthat\u2019s when we realized our home team is full of culinary experts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1580 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/03\/Vertical-Images_644-x-816_12_IESVA-tacos-2-237x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"237\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/03\/Vertical-Images_644-x-816_12_IESVA-tacos-2-237x300.png 237w, https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/03\/Vertical-Images_644-x-816_12_IESVA-tacos-2-600x760.png 600w, https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/03\/Vertical-Images_644-x-816_12_IESVA-tacos-2-322x408.png 322w, https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/03\/Vertical-Images_644-x-816_12_IESVA-tacos-2-276x350.png 276w, https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/03\/Vertical-Images_644-x-816_12_IESVA-tacos-2-200x254.png 200w, https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/03\/Vertical-Images_644-x-816_12_IESVA-tacos-2.png 644w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 237px) 100vw, 237px\" \/>The Friday fun began short before noon when Thompson headed for the office kitchen with a handful of grocery bags. As Ellis diced up the fresh-caught Cobia fish, Thompson set up the taco toppings. Soon, the smell of a home-cooked meal filled the office, drawing in both office and warehouse members. \u201cWhat a way to end a productive work week and reaffirm our team in all their hard work,\u201d said Thompson.<\/p>\n<p>It wasn\u2019t long before there was a line out the kitchen! In true Master Chef fashion, both eagerly anticipated reactions as members packed their tacos with flakey fish, fresh guacamole, and mango sala. \u201cThis was the best taco I\u2019ve ever had,\u201d Nicole Jones, IES VA Controller, exclaimed.<\/p>\n<p>The impromptu lunch served as more than just a work break\u2014instead Taco Friday seized an opportunity to celebrate our successes, appreciate each members contributions, and strengthen our teams connectivity. Not to mention, Taco Friday was a delicious conclusion to the work week!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Recipe for Team Bonding A regular Friday took a flavorful turn when IES Virginia team members whipped up fresh fish tacos.\u00a0 At our Suffolk office, Juston Ellis, Division Safety Manager, and, Ray Thompson, Talent Acquisition Specialist, brought Taco Tuesday energy into the office on a Friday with homemade guacamole and fish tacos. \u201cA family [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1581,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-team-building"],"acf":[],"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"IES Electrical Virginia","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1577"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1829,"href":"https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577\/revisions\/1829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ies.circles.studio\/virginia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}