blake murphy > wrote:

>The Kirsch brothers want you to know: At Chevy Chase Supermarket, it
>is now safe to lick the shopping carts.

>Not that they recommend it, mind you, but as co-owners, along with
>their dad, of the venerable independent grocery store on Connecticut
>Avenue, Jason and Kevin Kirsch know how common it is for their
>youngest customers to treat cart handles like lollipops. Worse, they
>know how unnerved folks have become in recent years over alarmist
>reports that rank shopping carts right up there with public restroom
>toilet seats in terms of germs.

>And so the brothers yesterday installed what they say is the
>Washington area's first full-scale shopping cart wash, a push-through
>device that sprays a misty peroxide solution over each cart between
>every use. It dries in a few seconds, leaving behind a faint whiff of
>beauty parlor and a cart promised to be 99.9 percent germ free for the
>next customer.

A local grocery store has a dispenser of santitizing disposable
wipes next to where the carts set, with a sign that says
something like "please use a santiziging wipe on the handle
and back shelf of the shopping cart, as previous customers
may have placed their baby there".

(I'm paraphrasing, but it's something pretty much like that.)

This, to me, is literally ass-backwards -- instead of
requiring customers not to infect a shopping cart, they
require subsequent customers to disinfect them.

Steve