I remember a while ago I was having a meeting with this woman, and we were looking at my laptop screen to review some ideas for a website.

She kept touching and poking my screen with her long nails. Even if she had short nails or no nails I wouldn’t want her touching my screen in any case whatsoever. It’s perhaps one of my greatest pet-peeves. Also, I had somebody at my place who wanted to point out things on my TV, and would touch the TV’s screen with her fingers. .

Please don’t do that. It leaves smudges of your fingerprint. With nails, it may even scratch it. And besides, LCD screen surfaces are not exactly made out of titanium – I hate to see my LCD cells change in color as you rub against it, and I’m concerend it might permanently damage my screen in some way. It costs a few hundred bucks to replace a bad screen. And even if it doesn’t get to that, I still don’t want to have to clean my screen twice as often.

I don’t mean to be prejudiced but it’s always women who do that – and my assumption is that because of the differences of interest between the genders, women do not understand the obsession and the love that men have for their electronics and toys. I rarely see a woman who is concerend about scratching the surface of an expensive car by leaning on it with your jeans on (whereas a lot of guys do freak when somebody does that because it affects the wax layer. I NEVER lean on or sit on anybody’s car body if it’s an expensive car). It is understandable – guys love our electronics and cars, whereas girls don’t share the same love (or obsession, whatever you may call it). So, ladies, please don’t touch your guyfriends’ laptop or TV screens! 

Here’s what I did today :

That’s right, I put signs on both my LCD TV and my laptop asking people politely to NOT touch the screen surface. Hopefully this will make me frown less.