Nail Clipping Nastiness

Personal grooming is a precarious pursuit.

On one hand, it’s disgusting if you do not comply with the unspoken guidelines outlining personal hygiene.

Those acts that must be done on a very regular basis include, but are not limited to: plucking, shaving, brushing (teeth and hair), clipping, cutting, washing, and filing.

However – and this is where it gets tricky – the aforementioned acts of grooming are not – I repeat, NOT – to be executed in public.

Alas, for the sake of this entry, I shall focus on the one particular personal act that drives me up the wall when done in public.

Dat iz de clippingz of ze nailz.

Mega no dankes!

I’m not a particularly skittish person. I watch Nip/Tuck without grimacing. Screeching subway cars, no prob. Bratastic kiddies squealing on the sidewalks piss me off, yeah, but I can handle it.

Clip your fingernails in front of me, though, and I’ll rip you a new one.

OK well I won’t really – I’m far too passive aggressive for that. But I will be quite cheesed off. And extremely grossed out.

Perhaps my disdain for public nail clipping began when I first moved here. My very first New York City boss used to sit at his desk (he was a pretty pig-headed a-hole) and cut his nails.

Really buddy? You’re really going to do that AT WORK?

I don’t care if you’re the boss of an eight person company or the President of a huge corporation: it’s simply not permissible to do that at your desk (or in public), PERIOD.

It’s unsanitary. Fingernails are filthy. It’s unprofessional. “Oh, let me see that report, please...um...is that a fingernail?” It’s the shrillest sound around – the dull snapping of dead keratin. It definitely makes me cringe.

Please, yo. Take a hint from everyone else’s favorite lady, Carrie Bradshaw, and clip that shit in your own Secret Single Behavior time! Not on the subway, nor the bus, not the street, or Starbucks, and especially not in your office.