TikTok Exposes An Unhygienic Practice That Might Have You Avoiding Your Hotel Room's Coffee Machine

Buckle up, because you're in for a wild ride that may have you shunning hotel coffee makers like they're carrying the plague. Or, at the very least, salmonella or another feces-derived illness. Although this rumor has circled in travel forums for a while, TikToker Tara Woodcox recently posted a video in which she shared "one of the coolest tricks ever" for washing underwear. Just stick them in your hotel room's coffee machine (sans coffee, of course) and start that puppy up. 

In a video that has horrified hotel-goers and coffee drinkers alike, Woodcox urges desperate travelers to place their panties in the brew basket (the container that holds your coffee grounds). As boiling water percolates through the coffee machine, it will spill onto the soiled knickers, creating a mini-washing machine for the worst person you know.

To put it mildly, the internet is angry. "This has to be an arrestable offense," commented one horrified TikToker, while a Redditor in the r/TikTokCringe subreddit shared a common sentiment: "I hope everyone who does this gets banned from every hotel." Even more concerned internet denizens asked a far more basic question: Why didn't she wash her underwear in the bathroom sink?

Rage-bait or repulsive reality? It's a million-dollar question that deserves a concrete answer. Forums like Reddit and Quora are full of anecdotes detailing crimes against coffee machines. "My ex's boss (housekeeping supervisor) used to clean those in-room pots with the toilet brush," shared one Redditor, while another relayed a story of their roommate using boxers in lieu of a coffee filter. Unfortunately, what people do in the privacy of their hotel rooms is difficult to verify. Plus, you can hardly expect visitors to fess up to boiling their briefs in a guest satisfaction survey. However, some hotel surfaces are dirtier than others, and coffeemakers are notoriously filthy. 

Specific research comparing the amount of germs in hotel coffee makers to other places in a guest suite is difficult to come by. But, in a study published by Nature, researchers found that coffee machines with a year of use contained 35 to 67 different types of bacteria — bad news for germaphobes. Couple this unsettling data with first-hand accounts of quick, surface-level cleaning in many hotels(you may want to avoid hotel drinking glasses, too), and you might think twice about that morning cup of joe. Whether tales of coffeemaker crime are urban legend or unnerving truth, picking up your caffeine fix from the corner cafe or seeing why the AeroPress is one of the easiest ways to stay caffeinated on the road is probably easier.