A customer calls support and complains about her broken computer. But in the end, the problem is not the hardware, but rather the customer’s fingernails. The employee finds it amusing.
Anyone who has worked in support knows that sometimes you have to deal with the strangest problems. This has now happened to an employee who had to handle a particularly annoying issue.
But the problem was, unusually, not the technology but the customer’s fingernails that were complaining about the hardware.
Woman cannot operate touchscreen because she has long fingernails
What was the problem? A tech employee explained on reddit that he had a very special case in support. He works for a company that provides financial services. Here, computers with touch monitors are offered for customers to use.
One evening, a local bartender called us and said the touchscreen wasn’t working. Most of these establishments don’t have a mouse, and often the problem is just a loose cable or a faulty driver. As I’m logging in to check the drivers, I hear her loudly informing the bar what a terrible company we are and so on. Finally, we finish troubleshooting, and even though everything is displaying properly, the bartender keeps saying that there’s no response on the screen. We decide to make a call after business hours to request a replacement PC/monitor, which again happens after business hours, meaning we had to wake a technician to handle this.
What’s next? The technician eventually goes to the customer and checks the installed computer system. 5 minutes later, he calls his colleague laughing and explains that it wasn’t the hardware causing the problems:
The bartender had very long acrylic nails and touched the screen with her nails instead of her normal fingers. After we explained the problem to her, she complained that we needed better monitors. When I asked her if she did the same with her phone, she replied, “Of course not, I don’t want to scratch the screen.”
Others also report similar experiences: In the thread, support employees explain that they have had similar problems with people with long fingernails.
One person explains that he was once cursed by a saleswoman because she couldn’t operate her new iPhone with her fingernails: “She threatened me, my boss, and our descendants for eternity if we didn’t fix it as quickly as possible.” The solution was that the employee had to cut her fingernails.
Touchscreens are now common in everyday life
Touchscreens are today present in many modern devices. From mobile phones to tablets to ATMs: People now use touch gestures everywhere. At the same time, the display, which is directly above the touchscreen, is one of the most heavily used components.
Because you use the display daily on your mobile phone, and thousands of people use various devices in everyday life where such components are installed:
- Whether it’s a bank terminal.
- In the supermarket, the payment control panel.
- Or the terminal if you want to get a ticket for the regional train or bus.
What can you do to protect your display? Many manufacturers are therefore trying to deal with such everyday problems. The well-known manufacturer Corning, which produces “Gorilla Glass,” claims to manufacture particularly scratch-resistant display glass.
Another option today is to protect the display with additional films or so-called tempered glass. Because then, in everyday life, you only scratch or damage the “films” and the additional glass, but not the actual display that lies directly underneath it. On average, you pay between 10 and 15 euros for such protective products.
