I have always been of the opinion that paying actual real money for bottled water is about as close to a scam as you can get. However, I have also noticed that bottled water does taste significantly better than tap water. I figured that part of this is probably because Cary's municipal water supply is horrific (mmm! I can taste the heavy metals!), and part is psychosomatic.
(Penn and Teller provided evidence potentially debunking the whole bottled water thing by posing as "water servers" (like wine servers) at a fancy restaurant, offering people selections of waters with different fancy origin stories. In reality, the water all came from a hose behind the restaurant. See the clip
here).
Today at my Superbowl party, the following conversation occurred:
A: Can I have some water?
Me: All I have is tap water.
B: Wait, you have a whole gallon of Deer Park water in your fridge.
B: Oops, was I not supposed to drink that?
Me: No, it's fine, but that's actually a gallon jug I salvaged and filled with tap water because a full refrigerator is more efficient than an empty one.
B: Oh. Well, it tasted fine to me.
(My habit of doing this also led to confusion when my parents were visiting. My mom thought the chrome in my sink drain was dirty and so she poured baking soda on it and poured vinegar on the baking soda to make it fizz, in the theory that this would clean the metal. She was wondering why it wasn't fizzing, until I told her that the vinegar bottle was actually just another repurposed container filled with tap water. When I asked her why she thought I kept my vinegar in the fridge, she responded "well, you do some weird things". In her defense, I keep my vinegar in the laundry room, which is about as weird a place as the fridge.).
