Pharmacy Makeup Stands: What's Your Biggest Beauty Bugbear?

Yesterday when I revealed the absolutely GICK tale of what had happened to my lovely new - or so I thought - bottle of Models Own Lip and Cheek Tint, you all sympathised with me in comments. Well, most of you, anyway*

And that prompted a few comments about the general state of counter displays. We've tackled this before - in fact one of Beaut.ies first Consumer Crusades was against the bleedin' stahe of the Urban Decay stand in Liffey Valley.

And it's still happening. Steph told us I "have seen ladies painting their nails, even doing up their entire faces with stuff from the cosmetics stands with NO SHAME AT ALL!", Glamazon agreed: "I hate seeing people applying tester lippies etc directly to their lips. Yuk." And Daiseeboo felt the same way. "I see teeny boppers in Boots all of the time doing a full face of slap from testers. Lipsticks, mascaras the lot. Always makes me shudder."

So it's a problem, I think we can agree, and one that's mostly limited to very large pharmacy and supermarket stands which generally aren't manned in the way that big beauty counters are.  In smaller chemists you don't generally tend to find this being a problem - probably because staff are in sight of the stands all the time and that discourages messing.

Surely that's no stumbling block for larger retailers though, and something can be done about it? In Sephora, they seem to handle the potential for everything to become a bacteria-ridden mess pretty well with lots of tissues and cotton buds available for people to use to swatch/clean their hands. In our big chemists and supermarkets? Ha, you must be kidding. A smeared, unattractive state is all to often the order of the day. And I mean, who does that appeal to?

In comments, lets discuss two things:

1. the worst stands you've come across
2. what you think would help the problem and make the budget-to-mid-price browsing experience a little nicer for all concerned

*Yes Aphrodite, I am looking at you here!