We took the kids to an outdoor thing they were having one Halloween for the kids. All of the members of a church in town dressed up and treated the kids out of their trunks. It was called trunk or treat. They were giving out free hotdogs ...which they were fixing for the people in attendance with their bare hands. Yuck!
The next year was when I started taking things for the kids to eat while they were out.
I thought that was so disrespectful to the people they were serving. I told my sis I wouldnt eat them but they went ahead and had the hotdogs. After that I started making sure they ate before we left and that I had stuff in case they got hungry when they were out.

You are right I never thought about it like that, they are protecting themselves, I saw a show on television once that showed the germs and fungus on our money whether bills or coins ..... gross, and here we are trying to eat healthy but being fed germs. We are taking a chance to go out to dinner we can never win!

even wearing gloves is no guarantee - hands wnader all over the place and touch wso many things....................

Especially when they are sick how can we protect ourselves?

Reminds me of a recent incident with an in-store free sample person (store shall remain unnamed). I saw this nice person, wearing latex gloves, reach for a tissue, nicely turned away and blew and wiped her nose with the tissue and then threw it away. She then proceeded to prepare more samples and I'm standing there almost gagging thinking about all those germs/bacteria that got passed to those gloves.

I think such people wear the gloves to protect "themselves", not the patrons.

There's not enough Purell® in the world to protect you during the cold weather.