clip… clip… clip.. Kill Me Now!

Note: This post was originally posted on an old blog of mine that has since been shut-down but has been re-posted here by popular request (which means one person asked for it). Enjoy.

By a show of hands, how many of you clip your finger nails at the office? Anyone? Anyone? Thank you! Finger-nail clipping is not something you would expect in the work environment, however, day after day I hear from the cubes around me “clip… clip… clip… clip…” I'm not even talking about the disgusting factor here, because God knows that I have my share of disgusting habits. And, I'm not even worried I'll cut my toe on a stray clipping. It's the office, I have shoes on (most of the time) so I'm safe in that regards. What really irks me is just the simple sound of the “clip… clip… clip…” Agh! Kill me now! Wound up a little too tight you may think? Well, yeah… the office is stressful enough with the likes of worthless people and the “shhhht… shhhht… shhhht…” lady (she's still here, you'll be happy to know that I haven't framed her yet) that the clipping sound is enough to drive me overboard. I guess what I really don't understand is how these guys (yes, I'm talking about atleast 3 grown men with very good salaries that do this in my immediate vicinity) came into this office-nail-clipping habit. While taking inventory of the work necessities one day, did they come across this hygiene revelation?

I can see it now… Standing in his bedroom getting ready to leave one morning, Steve takes stock of his daily office necessities. Badge? Got it. Necktie? Got it. Laptop? Got it. And then he notices a shimmer of light coming from the bathroom. Easily distracted by shiny objects, Steve goes into the bathroom to investigate. As the herald angles sing (as they do during miraculous moments in tv and movies) he sees the holy grail of office necessities. There, sitting on the bathroom sink, with the morning sunlight glistening off of it's shiny plating lies the finger-nail clipper. What a revelation this is! He wonders how he never thought of it before. At last, he can finally manage his finger-nail length from the comfort of his own cube. Steve is very proud of himself as he snatches (just wanted a reason to use the word snatch in a blog without being considered a pervert) up the clippers and heads out the door. After fighting Atlanta traffic and, of course, stopping at Starbucks for a mocha-china latte (I don't know, I hate coffee and coffee drinkers… and yes, that means you, but that's another blog…), Steve finally makes it to the sanctity of his own cube. There, as his laptop boots up he pulls his new shiny metal office supply from the pocket of his over-priced suit pants. Clipping commences and he's never been happier… Complete with the first hand, he begins on the next. At that moment, Bob walks by to make some wise-crack about Steve's college basket-ball team losing the night before. Steve will never hear that wise-crack because Bob is stopped right in his tracks upon entering Steve's cube.

Bob: “Nail clipping? In the office? That's genius Steve! Why didn't I ever think of that?

Steve: “Maybe you would have, Bob, if you had gone to a real college!” Ooooh, Steve gets a good one in on Bob! Way to Steve, this is definitely your day!

So the next morning, Bob proudly walks in with his mocha-china-grande (can't be out-done by SteveO, now can he?) and sits down in his cube. Bob admires his nail-clippers as he gently pulls them from his suit pant pocket. And across the office, all than can be heard is “clip… clip… clip…”

And, of course, the sound of me pulling my hair out and mowing everyone down with my stapler. You're all going to die for subjecting me to a sound more annoying than “shhhhhht… shhhht… shhhhht…”

This entry was posted on Friday, March 18th, 2005 at 7:33 am and is filed under My Life, Old Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.