You’d never let Typhoid Tommy serve food, so why allow him to sit near your guests?

To that long list polite society says you can’t pick—like your nose, in-laws or neighbors—add the sickly, sticky stranger dining at the table next to you.

Three couples of old friends were celebrating a wife’s birthday one Saturday night at one of those hyperpopular, first-come-first-seated restaurants where photographic evidence of your presence will either attest to how stupid you are for waiting that long or how hip you are to mingle with the night owls.

It should have been a