Words For Your Enjoyment: Nail Clippings
December 2nd, 2005
With the Holidays approaching and your finances growing tighter and tighter, isn’t it nice to know you can get a free present every Friday here at WFME?
And isn’t it nice to know that “Words For Your Enjoyment” can be printed out, folded six ways over, then placed in your honey’s stocking or under that abhorrent Chanukah bush (please, people — if you want a tree, buy a tree and don’t try to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes with this whole bush thing) so when the Holidays actually come you can share valuable words with you and yours?
It makes me warm inside just thinking about it.
But what makes me even warmer inside are the many submissions that arrived in the WFME digital mailbox this week for today’s digital column. (If I didn’t use yours this week, next week may be an option.)
This week, new WFME criminal cohort Lynn brings up the subject matter of fingernail clipping etiquette and says:
“I think we need to nail this down as a society. I’ve worked with several colleagues who feel this is an act of grooming appropriate for their offices/cubicles. I hate the click, click, click of someone clipping away over their waste basket. Blech. I once watched someone clip his nails at a restaurant after finishing his meal. To me, clipping nails is like taking a dump. Do it in the bathroom, behind closed doors. And am I the only one offended when someone asks if I have nail clippers they can borrow? Eew.”
Some people are just masters at a turn of phrase, and Lynn is no stranger to such a thing.
Is clipping your fingernails and toenails the equivalent of going to the bathroom? Or perhaps, is the act of clipping dead portions of your body off, in public, where they will often richochet off the metal part of your clipper and disappear into unknown places (never to be retrieved) actually the most unsanitary public grooming ritual since the dawn of time?
I say yes.
And I say yes for the main reason that nail clippings are like booby traps. They are invisible to the naked eye and jump out at you without any warning. They attach themselves to clothing, they hide in sofa cushion cracks and on the bottom of socks. And unless you’re working with one of those nuclear waste shields around your entire body while you clip (or you’re doing it in a self-contained mini glass box like Ewan MacGregor Ethan Hawke in Gattaca) — you have no control over where your dead flicks of nail go, who they hit, where they rest or how soon someone will come in contact with them.
And that is, very very gross.
Can you think of any other part of your body that you leave behind in public places or that you have no control over that other people can unknowingly come in contact with? Your hair? Maybe. A particularly bad bout of bladder-control? Possibly. But isn’t it interesting that the most oft-ignored parts of our bodies (our nails) are really the most unsanitary body shed and yet no one seems to say anything about it?
Isn’t it even freakier that fingernails and toenails are only one of two parts on the body that continue to grow even after you’ve left this world behind? Doesn’t that, perhaps, convince you that nails are (on their own) the most evil body part ever? (And don’t even get me started on the even more-evil fingernails that scare the public on more than one occasion.)
Funnily enough, I once was sitting in a local coffee shop when an older man was clipping his nails with a (get this) keychain affixed nail clipper and he was close enough to other people drinking and eating muffins that it appeared as if the arc of his flying nail clippings could possibly nail some of us. I decided to intervene:
Me: “Sir?”
Sir: “Yes?”
Me: “Can you not clip your nails around everyone else here? I mean, we’re eating.”
Sir: “What do you think this is, Communist China?”
Indeed, maybe if it was Communist China or North Korea we’d have some way to fight against the current fingernail clipping injustice that plagues our break rooms, living rooms, conference rooms, bedrooms and the seas of cubicles worldwide. Just maybe that’s what it would take to get these people to stop flinging fingernails into our fancy food*.
Or…maybe not.
—
*In other news, I would like to announce that I am a big fan of alliteration (the occurence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words) if you didn’t know already.
Heavy hygiene hilarity here…
Comment by Meg — December 2, 2005 @ 8:34 am
I had a co-worker once who clipped his nails and saved them in his drawer, when he was fired I had to clean out his desk.
Comment by Alissa — December 2, 2005 @ 8:35 am
Alliteration is absolutely awesome!
Comment by Brandon Martus — December 2, 2005 @ 8:36 am
That’s totally gross.
Did you save them?
Comment by Pauly D — December 2, 2005 @ 8:37 am
“Did you save them?”
No, dude, *that’s* totally gross.
Comment by Meg — December 2, 2005 @ 8:40 am
Creepy clippers’ carelessness causes consternation.
Comment by annabel lee — December 2, 2005 @ 8:46 am
Alliteration is almost always an addictive (albeit alluring) activity.
Oh, and I’m sure that my reward for pointing this out will be the immediate deletion of my comment , but Ewan MacGreggor was not in Gattaca. There, go ahead and correct it, delete me and pretend the world isn’t round! It is an act of barbarism on par with public toe clippings, I tell you!
Comment by Star Effer — December 2, 2005 @ 9:04 am
i was in a meeting once with about 60 people. we were all sitting around in a circle talking and sharing. i see my friend Laura reach in her bag and get something and hand it to this person. i cannot see what it is, but it is pink. then i hear this clicking sound and look past several people to my left and see that she has her knee up to her chin and her foot on the chair…she is CLIPPING HER TOENAILS! i was so disgusted, i told her to stop. she got pissy with me and said “well, i’m done now anyway”.
Comment by jenny — December 2, 2005 @ 9:14 am
What!?!?!?! I can’t clip my fingernails at work? Ahhh crap, now I have to find something else to do.
Comment by monkeyinabox — December 2, 2005 @ 9:30 am
uh, guys? it’s better than when ther person picks at their toenails (OR fingernails, even). i mean, think about what that gooky shit IS. GROSS.
ilk.
Comment by kristine — December 2, 2005 @ 9:40 am
I was blinded in the Infamous Nail-Clip Incident of ‘82.
Living proof, one might say, that public-nail clipping should be banned.
Comment by C Ro — December 2, 2005 @ 9:49 am
I think I threw up a little in my mouth while cleaning out his desk. Who saves those? Total deal breaker for me - a guy who clips his nails in bed. Done.
Comment by Alissa — December 2, 2005 @ 9:51 am
I lived with a guy once that put the first nail clipping in his mouth to chew on while he clipped the rest. Now that’s totally gross.
Comment by Rachel — December 2, 2005 @ 10:15 am
ummmm, ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
i get ewan macgregor and ethan hawke mixed up all the time too
Comment by better safe than sorry — December 2, 2005 @ 11:03 am
Well, both names start with an E. And their first names both have an A in them. And if your mouth if filled with jelly beans and you say both names:
Ehaaa and Ethaa
See? Plus, both of their last names have E’s in them and they both slept with Uma Thurman, so… You know what I’m saying.
Comment by Pauly D — December 2, 2005 @ 11:05 am
So wait, what did you say to the guy after that?
And fingernails HURT when stepped on. Impaling doom.
Comment by Brian J. Hong — December 2, 2005 @ 11:08 am
I am starting to think that we share brain cells…could we be related?
BECAUSE public fingernail clipping is totally disgusting. I have totally called our secretary out on it several times and she is always amazed…like “What’s your problem? Its JUST fingernails…” That click-click-click noise sets me off.
I’m in a restaurant with a friend of mine who is a model. Totally beautiful, very well groomed, proper in a non-snobby way…Anyway, we’re done eating and she busts out a pair of clippers. I freaked - “You are NOT going to do that here, are you?!?!”
Until today, I thought I was the only one offended by this. I feel so, so much better…
Comment by Flower Girl — December 2, 2005 @ 11:28 am
A few years ago, I was overseas for New Year’s Eve and went to kind of a weird bar - the kind you end up at when you consult your travel book for a great place to go because you’re feeling too lazy to ask around or do real research. I was pleased when I walked in and they gave me a “present”. What was it, you ask? Nailclippers.
Comment by sandra — December 2, 2005 @ 11:49 am
Unless I am alone, I take that business outside. That sound is maddening when someone ELSE is doing it and I consider myself considerate.
I wish I could say the same for others.
Comment by nic — December 2, 2005 @ 11:51 am
I am so unbelievably grossed out.
Even worse? I’m in the train station yesterday and some disgusting old fart is clipping his nails in line in front of me, (letting the discards fall to the floor.)
EWWWWWW.
Comment by LisaBinDaCity — December 2, 2005 @ 12:30 pm
I think I’m going to form a support group for nail clippaphobes.
Comment by Pauly D — December 2, 2005 @ 12:31 pm
another good point!
i hate people who clip nails in front of me. I have a picture of a lady doing that on a subway this past summer.
Related to nail clipping, too: nail filing. I was once on a plane with someone just sawing away at her nails with a nail file behind me. I could just IMAGINE the unsanity, gross as shit nail dust (imagine nail clippings ground up and set loose into the air like anthrax) floating into my lungs.
bleah.
Comment by C(h)ristine — December 2, 2005 @ 4:33 pm
C(h)ristine … That, too, is an irritating noise. If it had been me, I woulda gone off on her. What is it with these neanderthals?
(why did you take lady’s picture??)
Comment by nic — December 2, 2005 @ 5:25 pm
I was in a good mood I think, so I just held my shirt up over my nose and dealt with it. I couldn’t believe it.
As for taking the lady’s picture…just another obsession of mine: picture-taking. I’m addicted to flickr.com. I posted a picture of the nail clipping lady here on flickr. she didn’t even notice. I took her picture with a full on camera.
just to gross you out a little more: she didn’t even pick up her nail clippings on that subway. just brushed them off her lap.
Comment by C(h)ristine — December 2, 2005 @ 6:28 pm
I think I know that woman!
Comment by Pauly D — December 2, 2005 @ 6:37 pm
Oh my God, I can’t belive how lucky I am, I’ve never seen anyone clip their nails in public, Im so grossed out out. I think I’m gonna splash some more J’adore and hug my baby-shampoo-smelling schnauzer now. I need to forget all this
Comment by Veronica — December 2, 2005 @ 9:27 pm
Gaaaaahhhh. I wasn’t totally grossed out by the post itself, but after reading all the comments, I’m so happy I didn’t read it while I was eating.
I’d like to reiterate (but not alliterate) gaaaaaahhhhh!!!
Comment by Amber — December 2, 2005 @ 10:39 pm
You said booby… Err, I mean, I hate that too. Especially at work, and on public transportation. What’s with people clipping on the subway? G-ross.
Comment by danielle — December 2, 2005 @ 11:04 pm
Clip (drop). Clip (drop). Clip (drop).
That’s what my husband heard and saw at the gym today, where a man was clipping his toenails in the locker room and letting the clippings fall to the floor.
This ruins my image of men’s locker rooms. I want to imagine them as places where buff male specimens mill about lubed up in baby oil wearing too-small towels, not as places where social misfits prune their extremities, leaving behind the parts of themselves they are no longer inclined to tote around.
Comment by Lynn — December 2, 2005 @ 11:15 pm
alliteration always acts appropriately–aghast or acknowledge?
Comment by Melina — December 3, 2005 @ 11:53 pm
my nail-clipping story:
my boss does it at work, in his office. several years ago, when i first became his assistant, and i heard that familiar “clip/clip/clip/snap” sound, i told him if he did it again, while i’m in the vicinity of audibly hearing the procedure, i’d bring in a shallow dish of soapy water like Madge in the old Palmolive commercials. i even had an almost exact replica of that clear glass dish at home. i brought it into work.
lo and behold, a few weeks later, the tell-tale sound began. i rushed into the restroom with my dish, filled it with warm soapy water and went into his office and placed it on the conference table.
thank god he has a great sense of humour, because he laughed his arse off.
anytime i’m there when it occurs, i do feel a bit of a lump in my throat of nauseousness and i fetch that dish. he knows it disgusts me but apparently nail clipping cannot or will not be performed at home and only in the office.
the only exception i see here is an “emergency” clippage. when you’ve broken a (finger) nail that needs attending to. still, i usually find a waste receptacle to dispose of the broken nail.
the whole thing is really disgusting.
Comment by Melina — December 4, 2005 @ 12:01 am