a plague on all your houses

What is it with people venturing into the outside world when they're sick? I don't mean slightly-sniffly sick, I mean full-on hacking chesty cough with infectious sneezing and any amount of largyngitis sick. The other day I went to buy a magazine at my local Barnes & Noble, but after carefully selecting the one I wanted (no bent corners or overly-crinkled binding...I prefer "meticulous" to "anal," thank you very much), my plans for getting my new mag out of the store in perfect shape were foiled by the cashier, an older man who first of all seemed WAY too out of it to be working in a heavily-frequented bookstore (I'm guessing he talks to himself when not helping customers), but who secondly was far too ill to be out among the masses.

Unfortunately, he didn't start doing the telltale cough until after I'd gone up and plunked the mag down, so I had no chance to make a beeline to another register. I probably could have excused myself even then on the pretense that I wanted to browse some more, but then what if I ended up at his register again on the second try? So I soldiered on, even though literally seconds after his prolonged nose-blowing, he went to scan the bar code and couldn't reach it, thereby necessitating actual physical contact. I think I visibly flinched when he touched the cover. Then I had to run my debit card through the reader multiple times (having already decided there was no way I was going to pay cash and risk having to get change back from this guy) because in a nice Murphy's Law twist, it wasn't working - probably because I was so eager to get out of there that I kept doing it too fast - so he asked me to hand my card over.

At this point I started thinking that this scene could probably be adapted into an SNL skit about normal people confronted with the unthinkably disgusting, a la Dana Carvey's "Massive Headwound Harry." I think I was sporting a very rude look of pure disgust by that point, but seriously, what would possess someone to be that clueless? Maybe this sounds callous -- after all, if this older guy was working this entry-level job, he probably really needed the money -- but I'm sure such a large corporate chain wouldn't be a total Scrooge when it comes to sick days, if for no other reason than legal compliance. But come on, who hasn't heard of Lysol wipes and hand sanitizers at this point?

Of course, my own response to this yucky situation is not exactly Medal of Honor-worthy. I paid, thanked him (but not for the "free germs with purchase"), backtracked to the magazine section, carefully picked out another copy, removed the one in my bag with the tips of my fingers, hastily threw it on top of the stack and walked out before someone asked me what the hell I was doing (I wasn't sure quite how I'd explain why I replacing a new copy with a copy that was by all appearances completely identical). On the karmic scale of life, I'm hoping that sticking an infectious periodical on top of a pile probably doesn't rank too horribly. Compared to, say, stealing said periodical.