On the way home today, I saw a man sitting in a train seat, finishing off a bag of popcorn. Once he was done, he reached into his backpack, took out a little bottle of Purell, and proceeded to bathe his hands with the alcohol-based sanitizer for several seconds. Once finished, he replaced the bottle into his backpack and placed his hands in his lap.

Looking at this, I thought: This idiot actually thinks he just accomplished something.

Because hand sanitizers don’t work like that. If you need to get rid of dirt, grease, grime, and other visible soiling, a germ-killing sanitizer doesn’t do squat — it doesn’t dissolve the gritty residue. The germs from said soiling might be dead, but you’re still carrying the crud, and smearing it onto anything that comes into contact with your hands. Bottom line, you’re basically just as dirty — and a bit of slob, to boot.

On a basic, common-sense level, you’d have to be kinda stupid to not understand the principle behind this. But I’m sure that germophobic paranoia being as irrational as it is, lots of people simply don’t make the connection. Like my fellow passenger, who probably marked everything from his pants to his face with popcorn grease with this “clean” hands — all because he’s too lazy/clueless to find some soap and water.