Are you a hypochondriac?  Well, stay away from me.  I have absolutely no patience for people who obsess over the cleanliness of this and that when they’re completely ignoring all the other “dirty” things around them, then think that their actions are making them less susceptible to getting sick.  This was a topic on the radio one morning this week and I listened as people went on and on about never touching door handles or elevator buttons.  The irony is, they probably never give a second thought to touching their car doors (which is likely just as dirty, if not more so than door handles).  Or what about your very own phone or other personal device?  Let’s not get into how many germs can collect on those items.  I can just imagine the germaphobe wiping down their work phone while forgetting all about their cell phone.

“But wait, it’s not about germs per se, it’s about getting other people’s germs!” you cry.  Ok, then what about money?  When you obsess day in and day out about getting germs from public doors, do you also refuse to handle cash?  Do you wipe down your ATM or credit card every time you hand it to someone?  Do you wear gloves every time you need to use the printer?  I seriously doubt it.  So, in so many ways you aren’t thinking about, you’re exposing yourself to germs all day long.  Don’t pat yourself on the back for a job well done and think that you didn’t get sick last year because of the measures you took.  It’s probably more of the immunity you’ve built up from your body having to handle those dirty germs you got while paying at the cash register.

It also annoys me that plenty of the hypochondriacs out there flush their toilets right next to the sink and never give it a second thought to close the lid.  Plenty of germs get thrown out into the air when a toilet is flushed and inevitably end up on you, the counter, the sink, etc.  That’s a pretty dirty scenario, yet it rarely gets any attention.  Instead, it’s all about elevator buttons and door handles.  So many things make no sense to me – why would you “clean” a counter top with a sponge teeming with germs without thinking to give it a quick couple of seconds in the microwave to zap those suckers first?  People are really irrational with their decisions.

So if you’re one of those clean freaks, you might not want to know about all the “unclean” things I do (or clean things I don’t do).