Our office has a water filter in the break room but it is currently not functioning. No problem, I’ll just go fill my water bottle in the bathroom, right? I head in there and try to stick the bottle under the faucet but it doesn’t fit. A woman from down the hall comes out of the bathroom stall and asks why I’m laughing. I explained that I am thirsty and the world seems to be thwarting my attempts to get a drink of water from any source and gesture with my bottle to show her it doesn’t fit in the sink.
Her response? “Oh my god, you were going to drink the faucet water?” She sounded like she might as well have said, “Oh my god, you’re going to lick that rat you found in the garbage?”
We are in New York. We have some of the country’s best tap water. Tap water also has flouride in it for healthy teeth. I drink tap water at home every day. It never occured to me that anyone wouldn’t drink tap water. It made me wonder how many people won’t drink tap water at all. So how about you, would you drink tap water from your home or office?
sure. I did in NY and I do in the Pacific Northwest. I have been places in the Southwest U.S. where I didn’t find the taste to my liking. Still, I usually drink it.
My house is on a well, and we have fantastic water. The refrigerator came with a filter though, and the water in the door doesn’t work without it. And of course, if you just leave the old filter in there forever, bad things can build up in it, and I’d end up with bad water where I didn’t have bad water before. So it’s a little ridiculous, but I have to change that stupid, expensive filter every six months.
But I happily drink the tap water at work. I know better than anyone in the world the safety and quality of that particular water. It’s safe and it’s good, and I take it a little personally when people react like your coworker to it.
I drink tap water if it looks and smells clean. The tap water in my office smells like mildew, I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. I even use the filtered water to wash my cup.
At home I drink tap water exclusively.
I also go through a fair amount of bottled, especially for convenience when I’m out and about. I can’t deny that it tastes best, and I strongly prefer it.
I drink tap water, but I usually filter it through a Brita pitcher. North Texas water is normally supplied from surface lakes that get kind of earthy in the summer when the algae blooms kick in. The Brita does a good job in making the water drinkable.
That was my thought too, SmellMyWort.
I drink tap water at home and at work. There’s bottled water at work, but if I drank it, I’d feel obliged to put a new bottle on occasionally and those things are heavy.
I don’t drink the tap water at my mom’s house because she’s on a different water system and that stuff is nasty.
Voted Other. Our water is nasty tasting (City of Minneapolis water). The only way I will drink it is after it’s been filtered. I have empty gallon jugs that I take to the grocery store and fill up for around $.40.
I hadn’t thought about that. I still wouldn’t understand the concern though. The bathroom gets cleaned every day at least once, more often twice, and the bottle wouldn’t (in theory, of course, since my bottle didn’t fit) touch the spout at all. Besides, with the number of people who don’t wash their hands after they go to the bathroom and then touch every doorknob, table, refrigerator handle, etc. in the office you are getting germs all over your hands and stuff all the time. I can’t imagine being afraid of water from the bathroom.
I ended up usurping a cup and using that to get water from the faucet and pour it into the bottle. It tastes fine and I’m sure it is perfectly safe.
At my home, I drink tap water all the time but I have a very good, reverse osmosis filter system that was already installed when I bought the house. Even unfiltered our water tastes OK but with the filter it tastes great.
When I’m down at my Dad’s house I always drink bottled water or pop. I don’t doubt that his water is safe to drink but it just reeks of chlorine. I won’t drink it.
Nope, I would never drink tap water. It is disgusting, smells like chlorine and tastes like chemicals. I don’t even give my dogs water from the tap. When I lived in NY, the tap water was great and I still drink it when I go to the city on business or visits but in Florida? I keep a water cooler in the house for drinking water.
I can’t even remember the number of times I’ve had this argument with people. I don’t know what the tap water is like elsewhere, but around the DC area (but not necessarily inside DC proper) it’s perfectly good drinking water. Perhaps it’s due to the large number of people who grew up elsewhere, but you wouldn’t believe the look of bewilderment and outright disgust with which some people regard tap water. I find it very snobby and offensive. But again, I don’t know where these people or their distaste for tap water originate from, so I don’t engage them anymore.
I drink tap water now that I live in NYC. However, when I had well water in a rural area of Virginia, it was absolutely foul. I cooked with it, but for drinking water I had those big 3 gallon jugs.
At work I fill my water bottle from the drinking fountain, because it’s cold and easier to fill the bottle that way. But it’s still tap water. Tasty Cleveland water.
That’s my thought too. I drink tap water happily, but I cannot drink water from the bathroom faucet. I know, it’s a bizarre and stupid hangup, but I can’t do it. Wash my face, rinse my mouth, sure–but actually go and get a drink in a glass?? No.
(Well obviously if the apocalypse comes I’ll have to get over it. But until then, no.)
The tap water in the Las Vegas valley sucks ass. It has a high mineral content, so everything eventually gets covered with/corroded by a mineral build-up. Because of that, I drink bottled water.
In other places, I have no problem with tap water and I’ll usually just keep refilling a single bottle.
