Chicago has officially lived up to its reputation, at least as far as one iced-tea promo is concerned.
HuffPost Chicago reported two days ago on beverage maker Honest Tea's downtown Chicago promotion. The company set up a stand stocked with bottles of its teas, and left it completely unmanned, asking that people pay $1 per bottle on the honor system. They then set up hidden cameras to observe how many people actually paid.
(Scroll down to see video captured from Chicago's cameras.)
We wrote that New York and Atlanta had 89% honesty rates, while Boston put them both to shame at 93.3%. How, we asked readers, would Chicago do?
Many of you were optimistic, with 40% of you saying we would score higher than any of the other three cities. Only one in five suggested that we'd score in the eighties or below.
Sorry to disappoint you all: an embarrassing 78% of Chicagoans paid for their Honest Teas.
According to CBS interviews, citizens were quick to shift the blame:
"People who are trying something for the first time, they don't want to pay for it because they may not like it," said Marie Cobbs.
"We have a lot of tourists here. It's not us," said Mary Beth Chambers.
But others thought it might be a reflection of Chicago's true nature. Gary Tom told CBS, "It's a city. Look at the crime and everything." And HuffPost commenter Frank Jenkins quipped of the city's longtime mayor, "Keep Daley away from that stand."
Whoever's behind it, whatever the reason, we have to face the facts: there's some dishonest tea brewing in Chicago.
Watch hidden-camera video of the Honest Tea stand: