With summer just around the corner things are going to start heating up around here – hurrah I hear you say, however be warned, summer can be a particularly dangerous time of the year, especially for the elderly and young children. The Water Cooler Company wants everyone to ensure they stay safe this summer and remember to keep hydrated! Here are some summer survival tips:

Use sunscreen and cover up
If you are outside you should be wearing suncreen a shirt, a hat and sunglasses.

Stay in the shade
Between 11am and 3pm the sun is at its most dangerous, during this time if you are outside you should carry an umbrella for shade and try to sit under trees. The best advice is to stay indoors between these times.

Drink plenty of water
The normal recommended daily intake of fluid is8 glasses per day, you may find yourself having to drink more water during particularly hot days.

Ventilate your home
Keep windows open all day and all night and use fans. This is particularly important at night, when the body cools down.

Look after the elderly and children
Older people and children are the most suseptable to the heat, ensure they drink plenty of fluids, a mixture of drinks including tea, fruit juice and water. A good way to check if children are drinking enough is to check that they are passing urine regularly and that it is not too dark. Babies must be kept out of the sun.

Avoid excessive physical exertion
If you are doing physical exercise you need to drink half a litre of fluid at least half an hour beforehand and continue to replenish your fluids after exercising.

Be sensible with alcohol
Everyone loves a drink out in the sunshine, however you should know hot weather speeds up the effects of alcohol so take carewhen drinking. Alcohol will lead to dehydration so make sure that you alternate alcoholic drinks with water or fruit juice.

Keep cool at work
During a heatwave the office is often the coolest place to be. If you haven’t got air conditioning, use the fans and keep the windows open. Avoid working in direct sunlight and take plenty of breaks during the day to fill up your water bottle at the office water cooler and cool down.

Office water cooler Office water cooler

Due to the outstanding success of our very first installment of ”Water Cooler Jokes” we’ve decided to come back with more, yes it’s water cooler jokes – part 2, because there’s never enough jokes to keep you all entertained whilst you’re standing around the office water cooler is there?!

Try out one of these beauties next time you go to fill up your water bottle at the cooler.

Your workmates will be doubled over with laughter after hearing these jokes!

Joke Number One
Once there was a church that had a bell that no one could ring. One day, a boy came and asked the priest if he could try. So the boy went up into the tower and ran straight into the bell, face-first. The bell tolled loud and clear. The shocked priest gave him the job. But one Sunday, he ran straight toward the bell with his face and missed and fell off the tower and died. “Congregation,” the priest said before the assembled masses. “Does anybody know this boy’s name? Because I don’t know him, but his face rings a bell.”

Joke Number Two (Keep this one up your sleeve for Halloween)
What do you get when you divide the circumference of your jack-o-lantern by its diameter? Pumpkin Pi!

Joke Number Three
A judge was punishing three men because they had committed a crime. Their sentence was a few years in the desert. He said that they could each take one thing with them. The first guy decides to take an umbrella, so that he can have shade whenever he wants. The second guy decides to take a water bottle so that he won’t get thirsty. Finally, the third guy decides to take a car door. The judge asked, “Why in the world would you want to take a car door?” The man replies, “Just in case it gets hot, I can roll down the window.”

Stay tuned for the next installment of Water Cooler jokes!

Office water cooler jokes, Office water cooler

There’s always time for a little joke around the water cooler, but do you always find you can never remember any jokes to tell when the time comes? Well never fear, The Water Cooler Company wants to ensure all office workers get their shot in the lime light at their office water cooler so we are bringing you some safe, but funny jokes you can tell your colleagues when you’re filling up at the water cooler.

Joke number one 
There was once a young man who, in his youth, professed his desire to become a great writer. When asked to define “great” he said, “I want to write stuff that the whole world will read, stuff that people will react to on a truly emotional level, stuff that will make them scream, cry, howl in pain and anger!” He now works for Microsoft, writing error messages.

Joke number two  (warning, cheesy alert!)
Knock Knock
Who’s there?
Atlas!
Atlas?
Atlas it’s the weekend!

Joke number three
What’s brown and sticky? A stick.

These jokes may actually have people laughing at how bad they are rather than your comedic skill and timing. Nevertheless they are sure to brighten up someone’s day!

Office water cooler jokes, Office water cooler

Working in an office environment certainly has it’s ups and downs and while certain offices have different policies, you should always aim to respect co-workers and their workspaces, as well as take note of some general office ettique that should be upheld at all times.

By following these tips you will be an easier member of staff to work with and will help make the lives of others easier. You just have to hope everyone else in your office follows your lead.

Tip # 1 -Ask before you borrow anything
Just like when you were at school, ask before you take. As simple as this idea is, it works wonders and won’t leave you branded as the office theif for “borrowing” everyone’s stationery items. It boils down to manners, if you have any you’ll ask before borrowing.

Tip # 2- Wash up after yourself
Thinking you can leave your dirty mug and plate in the office kitchen sink hoping Mary from Accounts will wash it up for you again like she did last week (only because there were ants crawling all over it and she couldn’t stand the sight of it) is not the way forward. No one wants to clean your dirty dishes, you made the mess you clean it.

Tip # 3 – Releasing wind is highly frowned upon
Farting while there’s three of you at the office water cooler may seem like a good idea at the time as you’ve got another person to lay the blame on, but you won’t be taken seriously if you think it’s funny to break wind in the company of others. Your co-workers will never want to sit or stand near you ever again.

Tip # 4 – Try not to fall asleep at your desk
This is the worst thing you can do, it shows you have a lack of respect for the role and for other people’s time. If they could all get to work and stay awake why can’t you?

Office water cooler Office water cooler

The Cascade Water Cooler

Are you sick of changing over the empty water bottles from your office water cooler as often as you do? Does it seem as though people are always at the water cooler filling up their cups and water bottles all day? If so, you may need to look at swapping to a mains fed water cooler rather than having a bottled water cooler.

A mains fed water cooler will cut out the drama of changing water bottles and will save you money as you won’t need to have the water bottles delivered anymore.

If your place of work drinks a lot of water we would recommend The Cascade water cooler. The Cascade is a mains fed water cooler durably contructed to withstand robust use and  meet the needs of high usage customers. The Cascade also has a high chilling capacity in a pressure reservoir.

The Cascade’s state-of-art design offers two water temperatures, cold and cool.  The Cascade also features hygienic solutions such as concealed faucets,a sanitisation fluid entry point. Ideal for installation in public institutions, schools and offices, this plumbed-in water cooler can be rented from £7.00 per week.  

All rental prices include installation, full servicing and six monthly sanitisation and filter changes for the coolers. Unlike others, we have no hidden costs. Rental price reductions for multiple coolers.

If you have any questions about plumbed in water coolers, or any other queries please email us at contact@thewatercoolercompany.com or call on 0845 500 4455.   

Mains fed Water Coolers, Office water cooler mains fed water cooler, Office water cooler

Winter in London isn’t much fun. The weather is certainly less than satisfactory with it’s grey skies and rain and the fact that it gets dark at 4pm is complete rubbish. But there are ways to keep your sanity in the winter time, even at work.

You can try and keep upbeat around the office during the winter months easily enough and it will make the office a more pleasant place to work for you and your co-workers. We’re not talking about decorating your office water cooler in a sarong and mexican hat, although that might be a good idea to brighten the office.

Start with trying out some baking, sure it sounds a bit Martha Stewart-ish but you will be surprised how excited people get about baked goods. If you bake a plate of cup cakes and bring them in to the office, they will fly off that plate faster than you can say “who wants a cup cake?”.

If you tell people the day before you are thinking of baking some cakes it will give them something to look forward to the next day and it will keep you from going straight home and lounging on the couch. The one thing you need to be carfeul about here is that people don’t start expecting you to bring in cakes and treats everyday. Tell them it’s a winter thing only and it won’t last long.

Something as simple as cup cakes can be enough to lift the mood of any office. Other ideas include organising a staff get together at the local pub on a Friday, it will give everyone something to look forward to at the end of the week and will help with staff bonding.

If you have any questions about water coolers for your office, or any other queries please email us at contact@thewatercoolercompany.com or call on 0845 500 4455

Office water cooler Office water cooler

The office water cooler is a place of joy for most workers, it not only provides them with clean drinking water but it also provides a spot to relax, take a break and swap stories with fellow co-workers.

Walking around to the water cooler can become some people’s daily excerise as well, some people will even do laps of the office after they’ve filled up their cups or water bottles just to get a few extra steps in for the day.

There’s always the office joker who loves to stand by the water cooler to tell his (often, quite terrible) jokes too. There’s an art to telling jokes as you may already know, it’s so funny how some people can tell a joke and have everyone in stiches then someone else can tell the same joke and everyone stands there with blank looks on their faces thinking it was a “had to be there moment”.

If you want to tell a few jokes to your co-workers whilst at the office water cooler, may we suggest you prepare your joke so you know it back to front and practise delivering the punchline as that’s what’s going to make or break you.

Timing is everything and applies particularly importantly to comedy and joke telling so ensure you know when to pause and when to get faster and slower so your audience stays interested. The worst thing you can do is try to get the whole joke out in one breath then forget the punchline. People will no longer gather at the office water cooler to hear your bad jokes after that. However if you succeed you will forever known as that guy who tells all those funny jokes by the water cooler. It will give people even more reason to go fill up their cups.

If you have any questions about office water coolers, or any other queries please email us at contact@thewatercoolercompany.com or call on 0845 500 4455

Office water cooler, water cooler Office water cooler

The office water cooler is renowned for being the hub for office gossip and menial chats about nothing. But have your employees taken things a little too far? Are you finding your staff members are gone from their desks for long periods of time, then once you start to look for them you find them at the water cooler chatting away to another staff member?

This scenario happens frequently in workplaces all around the world. Bosses have complained about the water coolers claiming they cause an enormous amount of time to be wasted as employees grab a drink of water then spend another fifteen minutes chatting to whoever else is there at the time filling up their glass. Surely this is not the fault of the water cooler, but rather the employees?

If it’s something that is bothering you as an employer the solution is to talk to your employees about it, not remove all the water coolers from the office. Staff need access to clean drinking water at all times and need to be kept hydrated in order to be productive so it’s in your best interests as an employer to keep the coolers where they are.

Simply call a staff meeting and explain your concerns, tell them while you think it is ok to have the odd chat around the cooler a twenty minute gas bag session is not acceptable. Once you have voiced your opinions your employees should take them onboard and you should see a decrease in water cooler chat before the year is out.

The Water Cooler Company is London’s leading supplier of bottleless water coolers, if you would like any further information or would like to have a water cooler installed, please contact us on 0845 500 4455 or email contact@thewatercoolercompany.com

Office water cooler Office water cooler

It’s 10:30am. The clock is ticking ever-so-slowly. Judy in HR is fluttering around, trying to get your attention about something or other, but you’re unfortunately distracted by Russell from design and marketing babbing EXTREMELY loudly about some menial event. Again. Time for a little away time. Time for a break at the office water cooler. Sounding familiar yet?
Joshua Ferris, an up and coming new writer hailing from Florida and living in Brooklyn has conjured up a very true to life, touching account of just this- the every day comings and goings of the employees of an advertising agency in his book “Then We Came to the End”. They’re overworked and underpaid, and spend their working life finding ways to kill blocks of time. E.g. One of Benny’s stories = a decent fifteen minutes. Finding the donuts with which to have coffee whilst listening to Benny’s story = at least another eight or nine minutes. We journey with the characters as they worry about who has whose original chair, as they see good friends being made redundant and speculate as to who will be next, and as they “sit next to someone all morning, only to cross over the road to avoid them at lunch”. Of course, the characters often get together to gossip around the office water cooler, and guess what- a lot of what they have to say rings so true to life that there are many laugh-out-loud moments; and more than a few times when you shouldn’t laugh, but simply can’t help yourself. In Ferris’ words, “It’s the story of your life, and mine”, and an irresistible page turner.

Office water cooler Joshua Ferris, office gossip, Office water cooler

It has been recently been reported that British bosses may not be providing their employees with water that is safe for them to drink out of their office water cooler. Some suppliers in the UK are not accredited by the Water Regulation Advisory Scheme, which ensures that the components used and installed by the company are regulated and therefore are guaranteed to be of a satisfactory quality. Whilst it is not illegal to sell these parts which are not approved by WRAS, it is illegal to install them, so it’s always a good idea to double check with your chosen supplier before signing a contract.
Some water suppliers of these unapproved components are claiming innocence through ignorance, as they say they were not previously made aware of the scheme. No excuse, we’re sure you’ll agree, and suggestions have made to have a nationwide education programme so that this can no longer be a line of defence.
Here at The Water Cooler Company we have WRAS approval for certain parts that are used, and we are an accredited member of the European Point-of-use Drinking Water Association, meaning you will get not only a personal, friendly service, but clean and fresh water to drink from your new cooler.

Office water cooler Member or EPDWA, Office water cooler, WRAS approved