The Stabroek Business had met the two long-standing Charlestown Secondary School friends, Donella Long and Mariah Baker, late last year when their then thriving Professional Waiter Service enterprise with the catchy trading name of The Balance was establishing itself as a classy waiter service. They were beginning to establish themselves as an inventive, hard-working team of young women and increasingly, Donella and Mariah and members of their team were turning up at well-attended public functions, adding their own classy touch to those occasions. Donella and Moriah, like everyone else, never saw COVID-19 beginning to bestir itself to take the world by storm so that they too have had to deal with its horrendous impact.
The Balance is an enterprise that derives its patronage from public functions where the size of the gatherings determine how well the business fares. When we spoke with Daniella early this week, her altogether unsurprising story was that COVID-19 had brought the The Balance to a shuddering halt. The dictates of social distancing and more specifically the rigorous strictures that now attend the staging of public events have reduced the enterprise to living within the limits of regulations which they find almost impossible to endure.