A TikToker shared a genius, and totally legit, hack for avoiding the purchase of overpriced hotel bottled water.
In the short video, Minde walks up to her hotel’s vending machine and shows that it’s charging $1.25 for a standard bottled water. (Though the price can easily go upwards of $3, depending on the hotel.)
Minde walks away from the vending machine and gets in the elevator. She stops on the floor where the hotel gym is located.
After swiping her keycard to get into the small gym, Minde finds what she went for: about a dozen generic brand bottles of water sitting on a shelf for guests to take.
Minde grabs one for the low low price of $free before heading back up to her room.
While one person accused Minde of stealing the waters, she replied in the comments saying she doesn’t think it qualifies as stealing when the bottles are being given away for free.
“Some call it cheap, I’ll argue smart,” the working mom said.
@mindemoore
The popular video has more than 60,000 views and several dozen comments.
A Hilton Hotels & Resorts employee shared that those who sign up for the Hilton Honors program are gifted free water “all the time.” Minde said she loved the info but wanted to know how to actually get the bottled water since she doesn’t normally “see it just sitting out in the lounge or anything other than the exercise room.”
Another hotel worker said they’ve worked at hotels for the last 20 years and never saw waters in the gym.
“Water filter and cups but never bottles,” they explained.
A different commenter admitted they thought the video was going to go in a completely different direction.
“Damn I thought you were gonna kick the shit out of the machine and get one for free or something,” the person said.
Another added that they thought she had a cheat code for the vending machine. “I wanted free coke.”
A few people pointed out that Minde could just use the glass provided in her room and drink form the tap. “I could never,” she said along with posting puke face emoji.
The Daily Dot reached out to Minde via TikTok comment.