What's The Protocol?

I was just in the grocery store, gettin' groceries - duh - just minding my own business and looking to stock up the refrigerator, which was running low on supplies. I was taking my time, ambling about, and I saw a guy who looked like a street person. He was unkempt and dirty, and his face and hands were deeply tanned, like he spent most of his time outside. He had a wild-man beard, the kind where you let everything grow including your neck, but oddly enough his extremely long hair seemed freshly-washed. Or at least not as dirty as the rest of him.
   So I thought that maybe my first estimate was a bit unkind, and that he might actually be a mechanic or a roofer or some kind of tradesman that gets dirty regularly but has a home to go to at night. I moved on and watched a few more people, like the Armenian guy with the shaved head wearing an Ed Hardy shirt and sunglasses indoors, and the SoCal soccer mom with bleached blonde hair and 'I swear I'm only 29' desperately hip clothes, and the cartoon-like short man who was as wide as he was tall with a head shaped like a great big gumdrop. Not a bad day for people watching, actually.
   After my peregrinations I ended up at the only open register, right behind Homeless Man.* He had a Von's card, though it was beat all to Hell and had an odd, almost melted shape. The checker gave him his total, $5.43, and he dug into his pocket.
   He drew back a hand with the filthiest, grodiest wad of $1 bills I have ever seen. And I used to be a waiter, people tipped me in bills they didn't want in their own wallets. He only had $4, and had already presented the cashier with 4 quarters, laid out carefully on that little stand they have. She told him he was short, and he dug back into his pocket for a fistful of change which he counted out laboriously. Being this close to him for so long I had to reverse my earlier estimate. This guy was homeless for sure, he just happened to find somewhere to wash his hair earlier in the day. Or the day before.
   His transaction successfully completed, he took his purchases - gum, I think, and something else - and departed. His money sat on the little shelf, just leaping with grime and bacteria and unknown nastiness. I was wondering if the cashier was just going to leave it there, but she grabbed a plastic bag and scooped the bills like she was picking up her dog's poop. Then she got another bag and did the same with the change. She stuffed one bag inside the other and then put the wad under the cash drawer.
   It had never occurred to me that not only did some people have 'so gross you don't want to touch it' cash, but that cashiers would have some sort of personal routine for handling that kind of terrible yet perfectly legal tender.
   You learn something new every day.


*sounds like a super-hero, doesn't it? Kind of a hapless one, but still. Nobody steal this, I'll make a script out of it.