I had a co-worker who used to stop what she was doing, and blurt some variation of "here, let me help you clean that fingerprint off my monitor" and then proceed to engage in her ritual of cleaning the CRT (this predated LCD monitors). Several other coworkers intentionally would poke the monitor with their fingers (the grease from the side of your nose is great for this), just to get a rise out of her.

The day she pulled her little routine on one of the vice presidents was her last day at the office. She was out of the building before lunch.

This is almost making me angry. Someone would fire someone else for that? Please tell me you're not saying that.

The company shouldn't fire someone for not knowing their place in front of a vice president and making a snide remark? I think that's absolutely acceptable. If the vice president wants to touch your screen, you're not really in a place to chew him out about it. I would venture to guess that doing so was most likely indicative of broader issues with the employee in this case, i.e., if she doesn't know her place in front of upper-level executives, how is she interacting with important customers, contractors, vendors, government officials, etc.?

This is hacker news dude! We hate authoritarians throwing their weight around.

Whatever. Maybe the Vice President worked 80 hour weeks for 5 years and has paid for her monitor, her chair, her desk and the building she works in.

I stand by what I said. Just because I'm a hacker I don't have to have a misplaced sense of my own self-importance in front of someone like a vice president.

I wouldn't do what this person did in front of a VP either but being fired for it is not something I approve of. Although, as another commenter mentioned, if it was delivered in a significantly snotty way being fired becomes quite predictable. Authority believes it has earned the right not be spoken down to but real winners won't care, much.

She failed to show sufficient deference to the VP (who in other posts I've frequently called "crazy french lady"), who had on occasion gone to the board of directors and gotten other VPs fired.

As developers, we like to pretend that we're above office politics, or that our tools are our own, and other things like that. Nope. To managers, we're all as interchangable as furniture. And it wouldn't surprise me that much of the offshoring is due to the combination of 2 facts: that they have the power and we don't; and that the jocks are pissed off at the nerds because we don't kiss their asses enough. Just look at the title of one of the latest fad articles and books to come out of the Harvard Business Journal: does I.T. matter?. Remember what PG says about mental fads? "What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people. But they're much more dangerous. Fashion is mistaken for good design; moral fashion is mistaken for good."

http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?PlugCompatibleInterchangeableEngi...

http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/doesitmatter.html

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

Sounds like she was snide about it. However, that is a dumb reason to fire someone. I would not have wanted to work for that company.

It was the IT dept of a consulting company. The IT managers jested that watching Office Space was an occupation requirement, as the whole company was a bunch of the Bob & Bobs. This place tried to pitch themselves as a smaller and older (mis)management consulting company, in the lines of McKinsey, E&Y or KPMG.

A "space violation" which doesn't involve actual damage to something might be a matter of social/cultural etiquette. Different cultures have different distances that people stand apart from each other or different amounts of touching between friends and acquaintances.

But I think its always over-the-line when a touch can actual do some small amount of damage to the item - any touch to laptop screen is going to be reducing its lifetime at least a bit.

But I think its always over-the-line when a touch can actual do some small amount of damage to the item - any touch to laptop screen is going to be reducing its lifetime at least a bit. Bah. Well, in theory, maybe.

But can anyone here honestly say that they've ever had to get rid of a laptop even one day earlier than they would have anyways because of the damaging effects of finger oils on the screen? There are so many things in a laptop that degrade more quickly than the screen surface, I just don't think it's a very legitimate worry.

What's the worst case scenario from touching a laptop screen a lot, other than the minor annoyance of having to wipe the crap off from time to time?

Reducing its lifetime? How on earth can a touch reduce the lifetime of your laptop lcd? The insides that actually create the pictures are separated by layers of plastic you know...

If someone would do this to me, it would make me feel very awkward. I know, it is awkward that someone has touched your screen, but that is no reason to make them feel bad about it too.

I think it is so much more polite to just ask people not to do it again. Just asking them will get the point across and will not make them feel awkward.

Pen is something different though as it doesn't live a fingerprint or any trace. People touching my display with their fingers really pisses me off but a pen (or a ruler or anything) okay for me. Or even if they must, then at least touch it with the tip of their nails and not with the skin.

That might come across as a little passive-aggressive, I think bringing it up and asking either they they not do it or they they use the back of their finger as others have suggested is a better idea.