Sometimes The Simplest Solutions Are The Best

This is going to sound weird, but I’m working on the set of a science-themed television show for a major network, and we need samples of water from hotdog vendors. We’re filming a segment about the cleanliness of the water the hotdogs are sitting in, so we’re performing a somewhat-scientific test by collecting water from as many carts as possible and running a few simple assays for coliform bacteria and other things you wouldn’t want your hotdog floating in.

Or, at least, that’s the goal. The problem is that no hotdog vendor is willing to give us a sample of their water. Although we’ve assured them that we’re just going to report generally on our findings and not identify or even show any vendors (it’s all filmed in a studio), they’re understandably reluctant to involve themselves in the project.

So, now we have a problem. We have a script, a shooting schedule, and lots of set pieces related to hotdog water, but we didn’t anticipate such difficulty getting the actual hotdog water.

I’m called away to something else, and when I come back a couple of hours later, I see that the production assistants have somehow collected water from something like twenty different carts; before, we had zero! I ask them how they were able to do this, and apparently, the secret was sending an attractive female production assistant to collect the water. From what I understand, most of the interactions went like this.

Production Assistant: “Hi, can I have some of the water from your cart?”

Vendor: “Uh, why?”

Production Assistant: “Because I like it.”

And that was it. Every single vendor she approached gave her a container full of water, no other questions asked.