Well I feel like I'm in good company here. Nobody has told me I should be using tongs, and other people seem to feel strongly that they *shouldn't* be used.
I do wonder how many people are disgusted by this thread but are too polite to tell me I should be using tongs ... so to try to measure this, I used S.C.I.E.N.C.E. ( = Stalking Covertly In Earnest Noting Customer Etiquette ? ).
I've just been to Lidl, and bagged my best haul of HPRs to date. I got 24, and left the last 5 because, well, who wants to be greedy?
"I'm not a sociologist but..."
I then decided to loiter around the area and watch what other customers did. I was going to wait till ten customers had taken things from the bins, and just try to remember how many used tongs and how many didn't. My memory is so awful, plus the behaviour was so interesting, I realised I should have brought a pen and paper, then I had the idea of making voice notes on my phone, hoping people would think I was making a call.
Does any of this sound creepy? It didn't feel right, but, you know, in the interest of science and all that...
The findings were ... customer number vs behaviour:
1: No Tong: Mother and son 1. Son picks up an item with his hands, from near the front of the bin. His mother tells him he did it wrong - she prefers to pick things from the back. He didn't put it back though, which was nice!
2: Tong: Mother and son 1. Mother picks up other items with a tong.
3: No Tong: This was spectacular. A man stares at the French Baguettes for a while. He then flicks one of them lightly with a finger nail several times. He then walks away without taking it. I'm thinking: How can you tell anything from gently flicking it? Literally all you have achieved is touching someone else's food for no reason whatsoever! I've got his registration plate! (I haven't. This is creepy enough!)
4: No Tong.
5: No Tong. Mother and son 2. Son picks up items very carefully indeed with his fingers. This is good parenting!
6: No Tong. Mother and son 2. Mother picks up items very carefylly with her fingers. This gave me an idea: Next time I go to Lidl I'll bring some gold stars, and award them to people who do this. I'm sure nobody would mind or feel awkward at all!
7: Tong.
8: No Tong.
9: No Tong. Careful use of fingers. Good man! Gold star for you!
10: No Tong. Reach to back clumsily to take item, presumably she wanted something untouched but wasn't too bothered about not touching other people's food! Hmmm...
11: No Tong. God this is worse than French Baguette Man! A man picks up an item with his fingers. His wife then tells him she doesn't want it so he puts it back. Then (phew) she changes his mind and he picks it up again and puts it in a bag. Then indecision reigns again, and he empties it out of the bag back into the bin. Registration plate!
12: Tong.
Interlude: A customer walks past the bins coughing casually into the air.
13: Tong.
14: I'm not sure about this one, my voice notes are a bit muffled and are drowned out by the rather loud voice of a police officer who seemed to think there were more appropriate ways for me to be spending my time!
So, 4/13 people, or 31%, used tongs.
I was kind of hoping most people would use tongs, then I could say that the responses in this thread show that not-using-tongs strongly correlates to diabetes, pointing to a possible cure.
Instead I think the only thing I can conclude for certain from this study, is that I now have a freezer full of HPRs. And I'm a little strange.
PS: At the till, the woman behind me faced me square on and coughed at me with no attempt to cover her mouth. Thanks. For that.