There's a plastic diving helmet full of mushed-up, picked-over donuts in the bakery aisle at QFC. And there's an open trash bag full of used hand tissues spilling out onto the sidewalk outside Basic Plumbing.

Which is grosser?

The tissues might seem like the obvious choice—we know where they've been—but the tissues weren't intentionally displayed with the implicit understanding that they had been set out to be consumed. QFC set out those donuts—handled with dirty fingers despite the tongs—in the hopes that shoppers would pause to put one in their mouths. Basic Plumbing, on the other hand, didn't set those tissues out for passersby to consume. Or even notice. QFC, on the other hand, wants you to contemplate those donuts—"Shall I put one in my mouth? Shall I buy some?"—whereas Basic Plumbing doesn't want anyone to think about those tissues spilling out onto the sidewalk, to say nothing of actually picking one up and putting it in your mouth. The tissues are just garbage. The donuts are garbage too—garbage food soon to be garbage garbage (or shit food soon to be shit shit)—but QFC's garbage is meant to be eaten.

I would argue, then, that this desire to be noticed and consumed makes the donuts set out at QFC grosser than the hand tissues spilling out onto the sidewalk outside Basic Plumbing. But I'm not always the best judge of what is and isn't gross—no one who slogs through an email inbox like mine could be—so...

Slog polls are scientifically sound and legally binding.