The trouble with cheap water bottles

Recently I was given some BeetActive to try out.  This is some concentrated beetroot juice which I'm told is good to take pre-exercise for various reasons.  I'll go into those reasons some other time as this post is actually about the woes of cheap nasty bottles and why I now hate them.

You need to imagine the scene.  My desk at work is in a large office at my local authority; in fact there's just over 100 desks in my area.  I had some of the said concentrated beetroot juice to drink during the afternoon before a gym session after work.  We have a small kitchen area nearby and that's where I mixed up the drink.  This was pretty straightforward really - 30ml concentrate into the bottle and then fill up with cold water to make 500mls.

I brought it back to my desk.  A couple of colleagues were quite interested in this and were keen to know what it tasted like and whether it made any difference in performance.  There was nothing left to do apart from sit down and try said drink.  I pulled the little cap up and tried to drink - nothing coming out.  Next I bit it with my front teeth to pull it a little further, to see if that made any difference.  It didn't.

Feeling determined and a certain unspoken pressure from my audience, I decided the next step was to unscrew the back top and simply drink from the bottle.  What could possibly go wrong I thought?  Surely the worst would be that I didn't like the taste?

In full view of a growing audience I tried it.  Not bad.  Someone asked me what it was like.  I explained it tasted like, err, beetroot.  Then there were sniggers around and someone kindly pointed out the dribble which had run down my shirt.  My shirt was a very light pastel pink colour with a HUGE stain of BRIGHT RED BEETROOT juice on.

It was Claire who said "Doug it looks like you've been shot!" followed by a few chuckles from my colleagues.

"Maybe you could go to the cafe and ask for some detergent?"

Instead I have some alcohol wipes for cleaning my glasses and I peeled one of these out of the packet.  It mostly worked.  Nearby on a cupboard was a hand cleanser dispenser and I asked someone to pass it over.  This diluted the stain reasonably well and enough for being in the office without looking as if I'd been in some shoot-out.  I got home, explained what had happened and in no time my shirt was off and in the washing machine.

So the moral of the story is to be wary of cheap, nasty water bottles - especially ones filled with beetroot juice.  Perhaps the worst kind of cheap nasty bottle are those given to you free of charge - it's hard then to complain!  My advice, therefore, is to avoid these horrible, nasty water bottles like the plague.