Cut yer nails, Leopard-Woman!!

So I walk into a Bodega yesterday to buy the times, and I’m tapped on the shoulder. “Ay, Ay! Excuse me, mister! Can you help me with the ATM?” I’m thinking, she’s all of 40, she can’t be blind. Does she not read English? What in god’s name is going on here? Is this the Brooklyn equivalent of the Nigerian scammers? Then I see the issue, and am struck mute:
Her ATM card is in the machine.
Not stuck. Sitting in the slot. “I can’t get it out!” This she proves by scrabbling – yes, as god is my witness, the woman scrabbled at the ATM slot – her 7 inch nails unable to gain purchase on the card, whilst leaving her hand stuck uselessly two inches away unable to actually complete the transaction and pick up her card.

“You want me to get your card out of the machine?”

“Yes, could you? Usually I have my daughter do that.”
Oy. Here’s you card, hon. And a tip, too. Fashion accessories should not render you so fucking handicapped to the point where you need to be followed around by your saint of a daughter or accost strangers to get your fucking bank card!!

Dumb ass.

You should have showed her how to use the second joints from the tips of the index and middle fingers to retrieve the card.

Seconded. I’ve always wondered what people with extra long fingernails do for work … Any ideas?

my boss has insanely long nails.

she does no work at all and walks around with a pencil to open drawers/answer the phone.

After you helped her, you should have asked her whether she’s heard of nail clippers before.

Couldn’t she turn her hand sideways?

This reminds me of a parable where hell is filled with wonderful food, but the cutlery is too long to get it into one’s mouth. Heaven is the same, but people feed each other.

Apparently being evil also makes you too stupid to 1) cooperate for your own benefit or 2) dispense with table manners when starving.

It’s Edwardina Long-Fingernail-Hands!

It’s Edwardina Long-Fingernail-Hands!

Ya know, I always wondered how people with grotesquely long fingernails use toilet paper…

:eek:

They don’t shit, you see.

(What I want to know is how she managed to punch the buttons on the bank machine in the first place.)

Hmmmm, every ATM that I’ve known about will pull the card back in after a few seconds, for security reasons.

Depends on the unit. When I worked at a convenience store, the unit we loaded never took the card in all the way…it was designed so the card could be inserted and then taken out quickly. The account info stayed in the system long enough to complete the transaction.

Matter of fact, the unit we used had a metal stop inside. It was physically impossible to push the card in any farther, and also impossible not to get it out…unless, of course, your fingernails were a yard-and-a-half long.

my b.f’s sister has the “ghetto nails.” Whenever she puts gas in her car, she has to go inside to pay with her ATM because she can’t get her card out of the machine. Why would someone purposely do something that makes their everyday life more DIFFICULT? I still don’t get it…

I have long nails (grown, not applied), and it doesn’t seem to be a handicap for me. I just use my knuckles and/or the sides of my fingers for punching in numbers and grabbing things. And I don’t sit around just watching my nails grow, I do all kinds of things. Occasionally I break a nail, then I just file the rest of 'em down so I don’t look like an amputee. I’m betting the lady in the OP has fake nails, because if you grow them, you get used to the length gradually and it doesn’t seem to be a problem.

(Not that I have a problem with fake nails, other than the fact that they never LOOK real to me.)

I always thought the original point of ridiculously long nails was to prove that you were so high-class that you didn’t have to work, because no one who does old-fashioned physical labor is going to have much in the way of nails. But what’s the point of being too independently wealthy to have to work if you can’t get all that money out of the ATM!

Long long nails look grotesque to me. Ivylad and I went out to eat and the hostess had these 10 inch long talons. I always wonder what gook is hiding under there…

I’m just affraid that someone with nails that long will get angry at me and rend my flesh from my bones.

Probably was the original point, thinking of the old Chinese emperors and such, but let me assure you I do physical labor, although not on the “making my own bricks to build my hut” type of scale. But I cook and clean, garden and sew, type, do laundry and dress myself. My nails are always clean, because I’m just grossed out by dirty fingernails whatever their length, and they’re also only long for human-grown nails An acrylic nail tech would probably not consider my nails long at all.

Ever see the movie B.A.P.S.? The opening scene is set at a restaurant where all the workers have those giant nails. Pretty funny to see them trying to work.

Do you wear high heels? Makeup? If so, I’d ask you the same question.

If you want to stop doing those things too, you certainly have my enthusiastic support.