Listening stations in record stores are a fine concept, but they have at least one major drawback: the communal headphones. Who wants to wear headphones that have just been clamped against the ears of any number of music fans, no matter how recently those people have showered or, I don’t know, de-liced themselves? The potential for icky gunk in music store cans is too disturbing to contemplate, and it’s the main reason I rarely sample music at places like Tower or Virgin, even though I often want to. The Internet has made it much easier to check out bands without exposing yourself to other people’s bodily secretions, but sometimes a few 30-second clips at the iTunes Music Store aren’t enough to go on. A lot of albums aren’t even offered there anyway. And finding and downloading pirated music with Limewire or Acquisition can be a hassle.

So here’s an idea: Record stores should retrofit their listening stations with 1/8" headphone jacks so owners of iPods and other portable music players can plug in their own headphones. A significant percentage of iPod owners probably carry their iPods with them wherever they go, and so do many owners of CD Walkmans and other portable players. I’m guessing that many of those people would be more likely to check out a few artists on a listening station if they could simply pull out their own earbuds and plug them in. We’re living in the era of the iPod; why not take advantage of that? I can’t be the only person grossed out by the notion of exposing my ears and head to the ears and heads of the great unwashed masses. The installation of headphone jacks would probably lead to an increase in the use of listening stations, and perhaps to an increase in album sales, however small. It would also—bonus!—have the side benefit of lessening the wear and tear on the stores’ own headphones, which are so cheaply made that a single Metallica song can be enough to break them (and then they sit there, a sad, tangled mess of plastic and rubber and metal, for days or weeks or months until the store finally gets around to fixing them).

Of course, being an American consumer means doing daily battle with the hobgoblins of bad hygiene. I bought the DVD of the original Manchurian Candidate (on sale for ten bucks!) at the Virgin Megastore in Times Square today, and the young cashier abruptly sneezed right before he reached into the cash register for my change. He did the polite thing and sneezed into his hands, but then, without so much as a quick wipe of his hands on his shirt, he pulled my coins out of the register and handed them to me. What’re you gonna do?