I've always had issues with tap water. The main reason is probably because it was never normalized when I was growing up. My parents drank soda, and I can't recall ever seeing them fill up a glass from the tap and drink it. I wasn't allowed to have soda (although sometimes I was annoying enough that they caved and let me have some) and there often wasn't anything else for me to drink. Sometimes there would be iced tea, juice, or kool-aid, but it was by no means a guarantee. There was usually milk in the fridge, and I like milk, but it's not something I can drink all day without feeling gross.
I was mostly left to fend to myself, and I spent a lot of time bugging my parents about being thirsty. My dad would often angrily yell at me to drink a glass of water, and the concept of filling up a glass with water and drinking it felt alien to me. I could get chocolate milk for breakfast and lunch every day at school, so quite naturally, I did. Between these sweet drinks, the juices and drink mixes I was allowed at home, and the occasional sweet bubbly cola goodness I could occasionally have at home and friends' houses, drinks being sweet and flavorful was the norm as long as I can remember.
Water is flavorless, and I'm used to drinks tasting like something, so when I drank water, my anxiety brain filled in the blanks. The hint of chlorine from the treatment was often the only thing I could taste or smell, so my brain made me imagine I was drinking swimming pool or bath water, the large concentrations of which I associated most with the smell of chlorine. Or I'd imagine I could taste the dish soap that was used to wash the glass. Or if I recently washed my hands, as I brought the glass close to my face, I'd smell the soap I used and imagine I was drinking soap. Brains are real bastards.
Weirdly enough, I never had the same issue with water from a drinking fountain. The water that squirted out when I pushed the button always seemed cool, refreshing and delightful. The presence of these fountains in school was probably the only reason I didn't spend my youth chronically dehydrated. When I was at home and very thirsty and had no other options, I would drink out of the bathroom sink. This wasn't as good as a drinking fountain because the water wasn't as cool, and the bathroom isn't the best place to drink, but it made more sense to me than filling up a glass.
In a way, this seems sort of natural to me? This is a silly premise, and I wouldn't put too much stock in it, but I wonder if there's some latent evolutionary instinct that makes us prefer moving water to still water. For tens of thousands of years before the invention of drinking vessels, homo sapiens drank directly from rivers and streams and lakes, and moving water is safer than still water. Stagnant water brings disease, from animals that died near or polluted the water, and from the mosquitoes that are attracted to it. Could this bit of vestigial evolutionary code still be there hundreds of thousands of years in the future? I dunno, but it's a compelling story. Otherwise I'm just anxious for no reason.
My office water cooler
When I started working at my current job, the part of the office where I work had one of these:
Sorry for the photo quality, this is the best one I could find. But as you can see, it's very fancy. It's bottleless, so it plumbs right into the water line. To start dispensing, you press your bottle against the black oval on the right. It's an actual physical switch with nice positive movement. Ice is a little less elegant; you place your container below the dispenser on the left and press the capacitive "button" above it. Capacitive "buttons" on the right let you choose hot or cold water, and switch between different modes (if you don't need hot water or ice, you can activate an "eco" mode to save energy.)
It has a nice blue LED strip to show the current level of the water reservoir, which seemed a little unnecessary. I don't recall ever seeing it not completely full. But it's a nice machine, and I'm sure it cost a pretty penny. It's full of filters, and the water it dispensed tasted nice and pure. It got rid of the chlorine taste.
Unfortunately, I never used it much, because shortly after I started working there, the water system tested positive for legionella. The machine was shut down, as well as the whole water system. They flushed everything out, thoroughly tested everything, and someone from the water cooler company came out and cleaned everything and swapped out all the filters.
Well, in 2014, I lived near ground zero of a major water contamination event. For someone already prone to anxiety about tap water, this sure didn't help. I've been extra paranoid about tap water ever since then, especially water from a source that I've been told was at one point contaminated. I chose not to get any more water from this machine, which is just as well, because there was another test that showed legionella, and everything had to be flushed out and all the filters replaced again. After that, the machine was unreliable. It often started leaking and had to be shut off until someone from the company could come out and "repair" it. After a few rounds of this, they finally replaced the machine entirely.
It's been awhile since the last contamination, and with a brand-new machine, maybe I can finally trust it and start drinking non-bottled water again. The new one has a less serious but still annoying problem:
These motion-activated controls are so obnoxious to use. They're not sensitive at all, which is good, because you don't want it spewing out water anytime someone walks by, but you have to hold your hand in front of the sensor just so or it'll stop pouring. WHY. What the hell is wrong with buttons? If it's for "hygienic" reasons, that's silly. The part of the bottle you push against the button to activate the dispenser isn't the part that touches your mouth. If you're so paranoid about germs that you won't touch the capacitive touch panels because your coworkers touched them, you're probably drinking bottled water anyway. It's tech for tech's sake.
Obligitory Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy quote:
A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wave bands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive—you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program.
I'd actually be really happy if they'd just install a traditional drinking fountain. They're not as expensive as I thought they would be. You can get a basic wall-mounted unit for 500 bucks. I don't think you can even buy the stupid motion-activated dispenser. I think it's a rental with a contract that includes maintenance and periodic filter replacement. Goodness knows what that'll cost in the long run.
The drinking fountain would be perfect. One-time purchase. Not a lot that can go wrong. People who wanted to fill bottles or cups could still do so. I'd use it as a fountain, because I like drinking water that way. I'd have to get up from my desk more to stay hydrated, but I should be getting up more anyway. It would be good for me. I hate living in the future.