I don’t mind double dipping with my family, but I agree that doing it with almost strangers without checking first that they don’t mind is definitely poor form. Were I in your place, I probably would have asked a server for another dish of whatever sauce I preferred and then served myself out of that before anyone else touched it, just in case they were rude enough to try to double dip there, too.
Odd. I would assume at the very least you put your mouth on his on occasion, what’s the difference here, besides much less saliva?
Nothing really, if I’m going to think about it. Something about it being food just changes things. I know that’s completely irrational…but I can’t be cool and logical all the time ya know.
What’s funny is that I didn’t even really think about how much this bugs me until this thread. I mean, I know this about myself but if you had asked me what things weird me out I probably wouldn’t have mentioned DD.
If it was an SO or a close family member, I don’t mind quite as much, though I am likely to say something.
But here is a story of a time when it was entirely appropriate to go EWWW!!! in public.
Two Gamer Geek friends and I went to Old Chicago about two years ago. I’ll call them TL (for Tooth Lines) and Hal(itosis). Being gamer geeks, they weren’t the cleanest of people to begin with. You know that small corner of rot some people (myself included) sometimes have on the edge of their front teeth? TL had entire lines, at least 1/8" thick, across the front of all of his front teeth. I half expected that they’d just snap off one day due to the rot. Hal had the worst Death Breath imaginable, from his teeth literally rotting out of his head and him being terrified of Dentists. When I would drive around with him, I’d always have the window open, even when it was 20 below, it was that bad. Hell, I’d open the window of my apartment in that weather, his breath was so bad! (And yes, I spoke to him about it frequently. Nothing changed.)
So TL orders cheese or bread sticks with marinara sauce as an appetizer. When we get the stuff, he pushes the bowl of sauce out into the middle of the table, invites us to dig in, then goes nuts. He’s dipping and eating and double dipping and eating like a fiend. A ring of marinara sauce forms around his lips and as he’s double dipping, you can see a ring of foaming saliva on the sticks before he dips. I leaned back and went eeewww!. TL looks up, wide eyed and confused and mutters “what?”. I pushed the sauce toward him and said “I guess this is all yours”. TL got all defensive about it and claimed that NO ONE had ever had that problem before.
At that point, even Hal said that he wasn’t interested in the sauce now.
I can’t imagine caring if somebody else did it.
I understand that some people think it’s rude, so I try not to do it. But if I’m eating absent-mindedly or we’re really into the conversation I might well double-dip. If somebody made a polite objection I’d apologize. If they went ballistic they’d have an argument or a good bye on their hands.
Humans have been sharing food from a common pot for millenia and most of the world today still does. Your childish phobias are just that.
I never double dip. I just stick my fingers in the sauce and scoop out enough the first time.
I practice the modified flip method. With breadsticks, for example, I’ll break it in half, in order to get four dips out of it. 
I very much do not care.
However, among virtual strangers, I would have used the little plates.
I wouldn’t care if someone I knew well double-dipped, but seeing someone I just met do it (with a cold, no less) seems a little odd.
I have a reasonably large circle of friends with whom I share drinks and I wouldn’t even blink at them double-dipping, even though I still don’t do it myself with anyone but my immediate family.
It reminds me of the time someone I had a class with asked if she could borrow my Chapstick. I let her, because I’m a pansy, but I threw it out after. I didn’t even know her that well!
I can’t fathom being comfortable with this. Once, when I was a kid, I had an ice cream cone and this girl I hardly knew asked me if she could have some. I was like, wtf? But, because I was about eight and too afraid to say no, I let her have a lick. And then I let her have the rest of the cone. 
No friggin’ way was I going to share an ice cream cone with someone.
Other than that I’ll share a drink at the movie with my husband, but that’s it. No other food sharing, double dipping action for me.
I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t kiss a stranger with a wicked head cold. At least, not unless she was cute enough that the enjoyment obtained from kissing her was more than that of eating a dipped spring roll.
If they’re not coughing, sneezing or covered in sores, I couldn’t care less. 
Seconded.
I’d say most if not all people who share this sentiment were taught that it was wrong as children, and just have never gotten over it. I specifically recall at age ten our summer day care van driver often bought eight kids in a van one Coke to pass around, and the one kid whose parents had told him not to do this was the one thought of as the weirdo…
Ditto. I don’t do it myself just to avoid getting the stink eye from others but I don’t care if someone else does it. People’s irrational fear of any physical contact with other human beings is getting really silly in this culture.
Fair enough. But as colds and drippy bits represent an obvious active contagion, it’s a little different than the general all-round “ewww” that most people seem to be expressing.
Amen. I thought most people got over the EW IT’S COOTIES EW stage in kindergarten.
Okay, if you have a cold or other contagious disease, you should be a bit more sensitive about spreading your germs, but other than that, I don’t really care. My friends’ mouths aren’t any cleaner than my family’s mouths.
Buh? Shaking hands, yes, but anything beyond that? Color me confused.
Obviously you’ve never been clubbing. 
I’m not germophobic (I don’t even bother washing my hands before a meal, I’ll eat something that has fallen to the floor, I’ll taste drinks from other people’s glasses, etc), but I consider double dipping to be a social faux pas if it’s done outside of my family or close friends. Hell, I never double dip. I’ll flip the egg roll or chip around to make sure I only single dip or spoon some sauce onto a plate. But to assume that other people are okay with my double dipping is rude. I might not be terribly grossed out by it, but it’s obvious a lot of other people are, especially in flu and cold season.