The Human Work and the Water Bottle

A term I found blood curling was doing the rounds last week - “emotional support water bottle”. If it had been some marketing ploy from a water company wanting to capitalise on the self-care trend I would understand it. Still, on closer inspection, it isn’t any one type of bottle or brand nor does it have any real discerning qualities aside from the nomenclature and people’s willingness to use the denomination. Sure, some may have a certain colour or a cosy someone’s grandma knitted so the grandson remembers her at work, but for the most part, they are just water bottles and the fact that anyone ever thought to attach “emotional support” to them and, furthermore, that it stuck and it has tens of thousands views and a bevvy of hashtags is a sad indication of what little we expect from our work lives.

In fact, I’d go as far as to say that the emotional support water bottle is a clear and painful symbol of our collective, monumental amounts of HumanDebt. If we hadn’t had this debt, then the basic human right need for hydration wouldn’t become a sign of self-care.

Having a water bottle and having the accountability, care and respect to keep yourself healthy should never be seen as anything extraordinary. What’s next? “Life-reaffirming coffees?”, “Contemplative-shoulder-stretches?” or is it“Soul-soothing 3-mins bathroom breaks”?!

Maybe we should just brand breathing as an approved act of self-care and start being thankful we are allowed to do it at work. “My company did away with the pool table but instead we are allowed to take up to fifteen restorative breaths per minute

The other reason why this grated me is how it highlights the extreme gap between where we are and where we ought to be when it comes to employees and their work lives. Where we need to be is a place of absolute flexibility, accountability, purpose, passion, and emotional investment and the work that goes along with it ought to be recognised and remunerated. A world where employees are not nickel and dime on their every waking hour but one where they are given the conditions to thrive in psychologically safe teams that are mostly in flow. A world where how happy employees are is so clearly and intensely connected to the bottom line that ignoring it is negligence and too risky to attempt. Not a world where H2O gets a fluffy word label in front of it and counts as something of value.