The pandemic’s impact on water cooler talk — and sales |
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| The office water cooler isn’t a busy place these days, and neither is a company that fills thousands of coolers in Mount Pearl, N.L. (CBC News) | |
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| With so many people working from home because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the office water cooler is receiving a lot less attention. Are the days of gathering and chatting gone forever? A Mount Pearl, N.L., company that fills and distributes the ubiquitous blue bottles hopes not.
Pearl Springs holds hundreds of contracts to deliver water across the Avalon Peninsula, but the company’s numbers plummeted after the COVID-19 pandemic hit Newfoundland and Labrador in March. „Right now, if [we’re] breaking even we are lucky,” Pearl Springs owner Vince Walsh recently told CBC News. „The tap went to dribble … from a full flow every day.” Walsh described the first few weeks as chaotic, as drivers were showing up to businesses with jugs of water only to find the offices empty. Now he is noticing more customers calling back daily as some provincial restrictions have been lifted. Walsh said he is concerned about employees continuing to work from home even after the pandemic but he remains hopeful they will get the majority of customers back — along with a return of the breaktime tradition. „I think most people want to get back to their regular routine,” he said. |
V. Walsh: „The tap went to dribble … from a full flow every day.”
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