AITA: I make my office carpool use hand sanitisers and surface wipes

In the third article in our new series, Suzuki takes questions from readers and lets the audience decide - is this real-life person an, erm, donkey, or not, in a road-related conflict. And you get to share your thoughts!

In Suzuki’s newest series, based on the reddit thread of the same name,  we take in anonymous reader’s questions on road rules and car etiquette. This is a place to vent and a place to judge! We want to hear all about your non-violent, legal, car or road-related conflict. Give us both sides of the story, and our audience will judge: were you right, or were you, well, the mampara? Read the real-life stories here and vote on our social media platforms. We’ll update this blog with the overwhelming consensus so you know for sure if you were in the right or the wrong.

Ever since the President announced the strict guidelines around the spread of the Coronavirus, I’ve become even more hygiene obsessed and this has overflowed to my office carpool (we work in retail and can’t work from home) and everyone is irritated with me! 

So some context: I’m new to the company, and this office carpool was created by and has been used by about four people living in my area for about ten years. They didn’t need to include me but I’m a very sociable guy and I guess they liked me. The woman who runs it doesn’t ask for anything, but we all voluntarily contribute petrol money. Now her car has always grossed me out - it’s big, it’s clear she has kids because there are toys and bits of food everywhere, and it always has a slightly musty smell like she left a takeaway coffee in the car to go off.

I’m pretty fastidious and always (even before the warnings about the virus) use a hand sanitiser and regularly wash my hands and had previously complained about the state of the car. The other three people in the car always looked at me a bit funny but it didn’t bother them - until now.

She came to the pick-up point (a petrol station in our area) and before we got into the car, I quickly got to the front of the queue. I wiped down the door handle with anti-bacterial wipes and climbed in. I forced my colleague who was driving us to sanitise her hands, and then made everyone else do it too before they got in.

They were quite annoyed with me and said I was rude to just butt in and assume that none of them had cleaned their hands, and that I was insulting the driver of the car by acting like it was dirty (it is though!). I think these are precautions we all should be taking, and they should be happy that I took the initiative to keep us all healthy! 

AITA to insist everyone in the car sanitised their hands??

Is this anonymous Suzuki driver wrong?

If you have your own AITA question submit it here. Submit your query and find out if you were in the right and get vindication or maybe you just need to hear the truth. Either way,, you remain anonymous and we want to hear your story!

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