Part of my duties as IT support is to facilitate fixing laptops when they break. And let me tell you, the sanitary condition of some of these is utterly disgusting. I don’t quite understand how someone can look at a screen caked with various oils and reckon that to be “normal.” I mean, it’s got to be normal for them, right? Otherwise they would have cleaned it already.
One time I had a user complain about the laptop display getting fuzzier as he used it from new. You guessed it: it was a dirt and oil that was progressively getting stuck onto the screen. A classic case of problem existing between keyboard and chair.
I understand everybody has a different conception of cleanliness. But I bet we can all agree the definition of absolute clean: when a device is brand new (or a car is brand new). You would be rightly pissed if you opened a sealed MacBook Pro, freshly purchased from the store, only to find a lid with a smudge on it. Meanwhile, people are capable of using a computer with a smudge for a very long time, so long as the smudging was done by the user.
I reckon people also tend to be more cavalier with items that they don’t feel a sense of ownership with. Say, a work-issued computer. It costs the user absolutely nothing. Things given freely don’t tend to last very well. Just look at public housing. Compare that to a personally purchased MacBook Pro costing many thousands of dollars: I would hope users are more inclined to take care of that. Because they have skin in the game.
When the penalty of ruining a work laptop is essentially nothing (we simply issue them another), the incentive to take care of devices is completely absent. Needlessly to say, I wear gloves at all times when handling user machines. For my protection.
Truly intensely deeply.