I was dismayed to hear: “You’re not allowed to wash your hands in the kitchen sink. I coughed when I came in the door. Who knows where my hands have been?” Wherever they’d been, the germs they carried with them were now in the same sink I use to rinse lettuce.

If the sleigh ride that was this inspection had just been given its initial push down the slope, it then proceeded to plunge, luge-like, down a sluice gate of detritus-flecked squalor. Most disastrously (that is to say, 38 points’ worth of disaster), Ms. Torin determined that my refrigerator — which, despite some dripping condensation during the summer, has always been perfectly adequate for my needs — was warmer than the required 41 degrees, as was the food inside. I didn’t know I had this problem because I don’t keep a thermometer in my fridge (2 points).

These struck me as mostly legitimate violations, as did my broken meat thermometer (8 points). But then Ms. Torin started rifling off a series of less galvanizing concerns: the towels I use to wipe my counters were not soaking in a sanitizing solution (5 points), my cutting board had many tiny nicks and grooves, and thus may breed bacteria (2 points). I realized that I needed to start playing hardball if I wanted to avoid earning the nickname Typhoid Henry.

When, on seeing cat food in a cabinet, she asked if I had a cat (5 points), I said yes but did not reveal that my boyfriend and I actually have two (10 points). Then I stealthily whisked my lovingly wrought appetizer — Thai shrimp and basil summer rolls — out into the living room before Ms. Torin could nail me for harboring under-refrigerated shellfish (8 points). As they say on television these days: I’m not here to make friends, I’m here to win.

In the meantime, my guests had started arriving. Ms. Torin told my friend Liz, “I’m making sure that your meal is safe.” Liz replied, “I wish you were here every time I came.” My friend Mark bore a bouquet of fluffy white hydrangeas, saying, “I thought they suggested the immaculate.”