Germ-Neurotic Diners

Remember seeing Jack Nicholson in the movie "As Good As It Gets"? The character that Nicholson played in that film may have seemed unbelievably germ-neurotic, but I have learned that there really are people like that — customers who are a server's worst nightmare.

For example, on this thread at MySpace, TB writes that one of his "pet peeves" is when:

Places . . . have silverware sitting on a container on the table waiting for you. You either have to use sterile handwipes (If you have some some in your bag) to clean them or pray that the kid sitting at the table before you hasn't licked all the silverware before you got there, (or the people digging through it for their silverware before you had clean hands, etc.)

Good lord. How germ-obsessed can someone be?

Trust me, we are all exposed to millions of germs each and every day. There's no need to assume that children at neighboring tables are licking the silverware at the next table over.