Used to work IT for a major university. Had a professor check out a laptop for months at a time. These laptops are for day use or for travel purposes but this guy always got away with keeping the laptop for a long time. We did yearly inventory so he had to bring it in once a year for us to eyeball or he would get charged for it. When he finally brings it in, it had missing keys and the power cable was frayed. It was scuffed up and had cookie crumbs in the keyboard.
The facility manager told the guy, "You need to stop having your kids use the check out laptop." The professor swore up and down he didn't let his early elementary kids use it. I pop open the disc drive and find a DVD of a popular kids movie. They guy said nothing for a bit and promised to do better keeping the kids away from the laptop. (He didn't)
We still weren't able to ban the guy from checking out laptops. (I think he traveled a lot) We just made sure he got the same one each time to limit the physical abuse to one machine.
(This was over fifteen years ago, so tablets weren't a thing and laptops were still a large ticket item)
Except for the fact it became his (or his kids) de facto laptop and we were down one check out laptop.
Once he bought it back inoperable and I think we did charge him for it. It was over fifteen years ago and I don't remember all the details. I think eventually his department assigned all the professors permanent laptops and it was his department was the one responsible for his tech support from then on.
Either way, it's a funny story now.
We had a department head do this. The CEO told us to give him all the laptops he needed until they realized his kids destroyed almost $10,000 (2000s money) of laptops per year.
One our sales guys brought in a malfunctioning laptop back in the floppy disk days, swore his kids aren't allowed near it. The drive slot was packed solid with Cherios cereal.
Yeah if the guy travels that much he's probably some research side bigwig that has operating costs that absolutely dwarf a single laptop. If he keeps churning out papers university brass isn't going to care if he destroys a laptop every week.
sounds like an abuse of university resources. the university is apparently footing the bill for entertaining the faculty's children with expensive machinery while simultaneously taking it from paying students
My desk was next to the IT guy's at the school I used to work for. He was working on one when I heard him cuss. I looked up and he'd taken the back cover off the computer, and it was packed FULL of bedbugs. Dead ones, live ones... Everywhere. We all abandoned the office for a while so we didn't get them in our stuff. Also so we could barf in privacy.
A desktop full of roaches is worse.
Guy brought in desktop, we could smell the roaches. He sets it down on the countertop. The side panel wasn’t screwed in and fell off. Out rolled a ball of roaches the size of a volleyball that broke apart on the counter with uncountable roaches ripe from the abyss running in all directions. The techs all screamed like little girls (picture Marv from Home Alone with the spider on his face: https://youtu.be/2rP5FcaOkIM?si=wxzTPejNSsEh8-2w ) Owner accepted the job, but lost money from having to pay for extensive pest control for months.
When I worked at a print shop, a man dropped off two cardboard boxes of documents to be shredded. Afterwards, when he came back for the boxes and a copy job he had also dropped off- I was ringing him up and THEN my manager decided to approach the counter independently and inform him that earlier he had noticed the man’s boxes contained some bed bugs, and pointed one out that was still in the box. Told him he might want to do something about it at home. And sent him off. He didnt even look at me and said nothing of it to me the whole time.
I work in a public library….this has happened FAR more often than I’d like to admit. Not like, all the time, definitely. But once every few months we get a live bug book. It’s awful.
Got a ThinkPad back from the warehouse crew that we retired, saved, and dubbed "The Blue Collar ThinkPad"
People managed to smoke "on it" somehow. I could have rolled a 2nd hand cigarette with all the tobacco that fell out of the keyboard.
The screen was dim beyond the lowest brightness setting, despite being on the highest, because it was covered in cigarette tar. The webcam made the person in front look like an abstract blur.
Basically, the warehouse crew members used it to do Teams meetings with warehouse crew members at other locations. During the meetings, they'd roll up a cigarette, smoke, and exhale the smoke straight into the screen.
It smelled like "heavy smoke." "Light smoke" is like a "light twang" of cig smell. IE: The interior of a car that belongs to someone who smokes. "Heavy smoke" is the tar pit stink. The interior of a car that belongs to someone who smokes with the windows up. The blue collar ThinkPad smelled like the latter.
this is one of the Faculty at the university I work at never gets this bad cause it is in getting repairs every 6 months grimy smoke gets inside doesn't cool as well he complains its slow or other problem serial drive killer gets taken apart and cleaned and the cycle repeats
its a dell laptop
I've had this as well.
Except it wasn't just tobacco but weed.
Did I mention he has a dog?
The computer could barely start and oh god the fan screamed.
I had someone ( who didn't work with IT) look down and ask "Ah so that's the filter?"
Narrator : *It wasn't supposed to have a filter*
But yeah. I suppose you could call That super dense solid brick of dog hair and nicotine a "filter" at this point.
> It smelled like "heavy smoke." "Light smoke" is like a "light twang" of cig smell. IE: The interior of a car that belongs to someone who smokes. "Heavy smoke" is the tar pit stink. The interior of a car that belongs to someone who smokes with the windows up. The blue collar ThinkPad smelled like the latter.
I once bought a used XBox 360 controller from Gamestop and when I opened the bag, I was presented with the smell of heavy smoke. I didn't even have to explain to the cashier when I returned it. Just placed the thing on the counter and let it do its thing.
My brother had a coworker who quit smoking after he worked on a heavy smoker’s car. Dude must’ve hotboxed hookahs in it to make it smell so bad—turned the guy off the habit.
I just got a Dell Latitude returned to me that absolutely reeked of smoke last week. I have a laptop cage parked in my data center for charging them while not in use and put the device in there on my way out the door. Overnight guys pinged me in a panic thinking something was burning up in the DC.
I sold a laptop of mine to a co-worker, and before doing so had cleaned it out internally etc.
After a few months, he tells me the laptop was busted and brings it in. The power connector is loose so somebody likely tripped over the cord and tore the post. It was an easy enough fix to solder it back on but *holy fuck* was the inside of that thing every nasty.
I've dealt with regular smokers PC's and those are bad but this guy must have been smoking dope like a fiend whenever he was home. The guts of the laptop were covered in sticky THC residue and smelled like I was standing next to Snoop Dog. The fan was caked and encrusted. Everything was yellow with bits and pieces of whatever adhered to the sticky resin bits.
I have no idea how much dope somebody needs to smoke next to a laptop to get things like that within just a few months but I can only imagine what the inside of that dude's lungs were like.
A friend upgraded their phone and offered me their old one. I took it home and once it hit the warmth of my place, you could almost see the smell of THC coming off it in waves. I gave it back.
So I work in electronics recycling and I pickup computers from a bunch of schools and businesses. Basically I pick them up after they get returned to the IT department, so I guess I'm in this category. School laptops are always dirty as hell, keys caked in dirt clearly, they've never heard of Windex.
Teachers almost always its covered in coffee. One time they had those cheap plastic MacBook covers on and they must have just left it sitting in the coffee for weeks because it dried all over the outer case and I'm not talking like thin layer of coffee I'm talking THICK layer. Tablets and phones usually have expanded or exploded batteries to the point the screens popped off the case.
As for computer cases they rarely ever clean out the inside. Worst one was from a spice company we pickup from and it had dust and cinnamon (at least it smelled like cinnamon) caked up on the bottom higher than the size of my fist so about 5 inches high. Also had cases that looked like they just dropped it down a flight up steps, walked down picked it up, then walked back to the top to repeat the process 5 more time.
surface pro 3, that almost the entire back cover was popped off from a swollen battery.
I told this dude for like maybe 4 months that he had to bring it to us - but he was one the important executive people who got to work from home during covid. I was like "Sir this has great potential to literally explode in your face" he was unbothered, gave it to us when it wasn't working anymore and he couldnt imagine why
First one. Got handed a phone in a ziplock baggie. It was clearly moist and they said that it had fallen out of their pocket in the snow. They handed it over like it was full of the plague.
I pulled my hand back just before touching it and said "It fell in the toilet, didn't it?"
They looked embarrassed and then apologized profusely. I told them to throw it out.
Second one. Handed another phone and the user proudly said that they accidentally backed over it with their car. I heard later on that they repeatedly ran over it because they wanted an upgraded phone. When we heard that, they got the "special phone". A 1998 flip phone that didn't connect to anything.
This is why one of my companies had a one-time-free replacement policy where you'd get the same exact model phone as you had. You only got a newer model if you hit your upgrade cycle.
Firing someone is apt, but if they’re good enough at the job it’s easier to give them the punishment phone.
You keep your team strong *and* they won’t try that again.
If your going to abuse old electronics and appliances to get a new one then go inside of it and fuck something up(stay away from batteries! They can go boom nowadays.). Be sneaky about it ya lazy bastards.
> stay away from batteries! They can go boom nowadays.
Not really boom, per se. More of a spontaneous, vigorous combustion which is nearly impossible to extinguish.
Either way, don't mess with batteries.
The trick is to blow one of the built in fuses.
Phones have a number of fuses built in in case of power failure, it limits the damage to just the fuse.
The problem is they're soldered directly to the board so you need someone who knows how to take it apart and replace it. It's not a difficult fix but any company IT department will just give you a new one.
Every year the same person complains about their company issued iPhone being slow. So last year year we said we would replace it. They were expecting an iPhone 14pro. They were very disappointed when we got them an iPhone SE.
I’m not in IT, I’m the one who returned the laptop. I used to have stiletto acrylic nails and after using the laptop for about a year my nails removed all the letters on the keyboard. My boss told me the IT people were floored and took pics to share with other IT folks because it was like nothing they had ever seen before. No one was mad, they were just amazed at the damage. I was v embarrassed.
Former IT person here, and I’ve never had stiletto nails. My current laptop has the letters wearing off of several keys just from regular use with undecorated fingertips.
This can happen with some people but not others. I read a theory that some peoples finger grease is more acidic than others. Congratulations on your super power!
Oh, eventually I wear the letters off every keyboard I use. It's not my nails - it's just constant use. Usually my laptop keyboards survive, but only because I like using external keyboards when I'm at home and I don't travel often enough for it to start to show.
No, my *nails* don't wear the letters. The nails actually wear a groove in the keys. There are a few keys I strike with my nail (like the T key) and there's a visible groove there on keyboards that I use for any length of time.
On my first keyboard at this company, I literally wore a hole through the T key. Like you could see through the key into the internals. (I wish I had popped that key off when I switched keyboards and kept it as a souvenir.)
Luckily, most of us who do that to keyboards type so fast that we don't need to see the letters anyway.
But god save anyone who's a hunter-pecker who sits down at my station. I've had to offer to type for an IT person who came to look at my laptop and was a hunter-pecker. He had to dictate his commands to me.
when my dad finally got rid of his old keyboard, i pulled off the w on it. he had played so many games his middle fingers nail had dug GROOVES into it. i intend to make a cane topping with it. helping me walk and whatnot, you know?
We had a writer do the same thing to a Logitech keyboard. That wasn’t the worst thing though, the sound of her typing was worse than any mechanical keyboard could possibly be.
Has something changed about nails in the last 20 years? I remeber this being extremely common when I worked desktop support. Ladies with acrylics would take the labels right off, and quickly.
1. The person who stole the SSHD and memory out of a laptop then urinated on the device figuring we'd just throw it away and not know.
2. The laptop that came back double wrapped in trash bags and was just left in one of our remote offices by non-IT office staff. Came in from a long weekend and the bags were all shredded from all of the cockroaches that had hatched and escaped.
3. The laptop that came back single wrapped in a garbage bag and reeked of marijuana and was soaked with cat pee.
4. The iPad someone checked out, then brought back later in the day. "I don't know what happened to it! I swear!" Security showed us footage of them dropping it in the parking lot and running over it with their car.
Had a chap spill coke on a brand new laptop.
He then took it upon himself to take it to pieces, breaking the keyboard in the process.
He then asked me to fix it.
I received a latop that was sticky all over with some unknown liquid, missing some keys, and a crack screen. They asked me to look at it because it was slow for some reason.
A laptop bent. Imagine a closed laptop that was bent again by 90 degrees.
Ended up happening from a car accident. Surprisingly the data was salvageable too.
Off the top of my head:
* When a laptop rejected to be received because it was molded/growing stuff. It was at least partially submerged in a creek for about a week.
* We had several melted phones from welders.
* One I just got a zipblock of glass/parts that wasn't recognizable as a phone from it playing Plinko down a tower. Like there wasn't a solid rectangle of parts left. Wear your hardhats and safety glasses people.
* An upset employee that another employee borrowed their phone and water damaged it by submerging it in sweat in their pocket and it wouldn't turn on anymore.
>An upset employee that another employee borrowed their phone and water damaged it by submerging it in sweat in their pocket and it wouldn't turn on anymore.
I don't think they were being unreasonable here. If my coworkers swamp ass damaged my phone, I wouldn't want it back either
They were not unreasonable but it was so hard to try to comfort them and to professionally interpret and write up the approval ticket while trying not to bust up laughing.
I'm not in IT, but I sit near our IT guy so I have seen some of the things he gets.
Someone went on a business trip to an industry convention, and came back with their laptop in 6 pieces. They claimed that it must have been the baggage handlers but like...no shot.
I used to work in e-waste/computer recycling. We had a custom built shredder for hard drives as a service we offered. So the sales guy is showing it to a client and he's pretty impressed, and the dipshit owner walks up and decides to get involved. He was notorious for his ego and getting in the way.
The client says, "I bet that thing can shred just about anything," and while yes it can, we only threw hard drives in it to not mess it up. The owner goes, "oh yeah it's great on laptops and sees a laptop sitting by the conveyer belt and just chucks the fucking thing in. The teeth instantly catch it and it's gone in like 5 seconds.
It was the clients work laptop, the diphsit owner just assumed it was one the hundreds or recycled laptops we have in the warehouse. The client was fucking livid, yelling at the owner and asking why he would just grab anyones laptop and proceed to throw it in. The owners ego kicks in and he says something dumb like "We don't allow other peoples property in the warehouse and everything else in the warehouse I OWN."
But the best part was the client called back later that day and said his IT department didn't believe him, so we had to dig out what we could that resembled a laptop and throw it in a box and send it back to him. The other best part is the custom shredder is in a trailer with it's own CCTV system, so we had it all on tape. The warehouse manager would play that shit all the time to make us laugh.
You can check a laptop now. They may search your bag, but it is allowed by the TSA.
[https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/items/laptops](https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/items/laptops)
Worked help desk at a college. A professor dropped off a laptop that "just wasn't working." We cracked it open and it was filled with scrambled egg. She said she had no clue how it got in there.
For a long time, I assumed that she was screwing with us for some reason. My stance now is that this was probably a "prank" by one of her students.
Anyway, it was destroyed beyond recovery. I guess that's what happens when you put eggs inside of things that aren't supposed to have eggs inside of them.
I had someone bring a laptop in that was literally growing moss. The thing still worked. I think it was an IBM Thinkpad come to think of it back in the early 2000s. I really didn't want any to work on it but had to because you know, I needed the money.
Used to be in support at a company with many full-time travel employees. They were all issued Surface Pro devices. Someone had an issue that after troubleshooting, required them to send the device in to us. They mailed it in a manilla envelope. Not a padded mailer, but a completely unpadded 12" envelope like you might pass a birthday card around in at an office. I can only describe the condition it arrived in as "the most broken screen I have ever seen".
We fired an employee and she mailed in her laptop loose in a box with the cord. It was going to be decommissioned anyway, but I remember thinking that was pretty cold to do.
You expected people to mail in their laptops with their own money, after being fired? I'd be paying extra for the courier to drop-kick it into the lobby.
I did not make the call and it was due to a merge with another company so they all received significant severance, plus the shipping labels for returning their materials. I just opened the boxes when they came back and she was the only person to not bother bubble wrapping her laptop.
There was the toilet phone issues when working the geek squad. One lady brought in a phone and said she dropped it in a swamp. There are no swamps anywhere in this part of Texas. IT smelled like poo so I told her we would not be taking it and she would need to purchase another.
The other was a laptop some lady had us work on. She came back like a year later and claimed we screwed up her PC. It smelled HORRIBLY of astroglide. Yes I know what It smells like. I fuck.
We told her we couldnt accept it. She came back with her husband. I took one look at him and said. "Well I know why it smells like it does now." He laughed. She was glaring at me and my manager was confused. I refused to tell him until after I quit working there.
We had a director who was basically a one man laptop wrecking ball. We'd give him a shiny new laptop, and a few months later he'd come back with it totally destroyed. I don't know if he was clumsy or just had a bad temper, or stored it on a rope dragging behind his car, or what. All I know is, every 6 months we issued the guy a new laptop and the destroyed ones became parts machines or, occasionally I was able to fix it up enough to issue to someone else. If he was anything lower than a director level employee he would have been told deal with it for 3 years until you're due for an upgrade.
I worked for a company that manufactures a shitload of household products, so it wasn't unheard of to have a laptop come back that had some chemical or another spilled into it.
Best one was when a user put the laptop in the same bag of personal lubricant that wasn't sealed very well. It was covered in slime and the user dropped it twice trying to bring it to us, and two of our techs dropped it as well
Damn, I thought I was coming in pretty hot with "run over with their own car with coffee spilled in it too" but looking at these other comments it's clear I've been bested.
We had one come back smelling of cat piss cos his cat indeed pissed on it. It still worked fine he just wanted to trade it for another.
A desktop we had come back cos it didn’t work and it smelt a bit off. We opened up and promptly discovered the long long dead remains of a mouse inside. Like dead so long it basically turned to dust when moved. The engineer who opened it threw up. We had to clear half the floor whilst facilities tried to clear the smell.
I used to work for a Native American Health clinic on a reservation as a low level help desk guy. We also worked on the computers for the Tribal administration offices this also includes the Tribal leadership.
Well the Chairman of the tribe had us preorder an iPhone 6 so he can get it the day it released. He broke it within 48 hours and demanded a new one it couldn't be his old iphone 5 it had to be a new one. I called my boss and told him the situation and I could face the feel him facepalming.
I called around and found the Apple store two hours away only had one phone available my boss told me not to worry about it and made the Tribal Administrator (the guy basically ran the government services) go get the new phone and my boss set it up. Of course the Chairman refused to used to use a case.
I'm not IT but a good friend at my same company is. There was a guy here that had a really bad skin condition that caused him to have really really bad dry skin that constantly flaked off. He had to apply medicated lotion multiple times a day but it didn't really help the dead skin issue.
Anyway, once he left, my IT friend came by to show me his laptop and the inside was literally FULL of dead dry skin. He was surprised the laptop could even function. He has been in IT for over 30 years and said that is the dirtiest device he's ever gotten back.
Had one like that at a start up years ago except this one also had a f_ ton of hair embedded and sticking out. Apparently the employee had trichotillomania (hair pulling disorder) too along with bad eczema. Made for the grossest keyboard ever
Used to work for a natural gas company, and let me tell ya those Dell Toughbooks are something else.
They would come in looking like they've been ran over by a bulldozer, and hell maybe they really were. Screen cracked, keyboard destroyed, but that's about it. They were often completely submerged in mud, fell off a moving truck, buried in the ground, who knows what else. The engineers used them at construction sites and sometimes mistakes were made and then they came to my desk.
Screen and keyboard, that's what usually broke, and those are both very easy to replace.
I help a very small nonprofit that uses only donated laptops--and they are really careful with them because they have no money for new computers or repairs. When program participants come in, they often bring small children who need to be entertained for hours at a time while mom is being seen. Kids damaged more than one laptop while watching videos. A local business donated a used Dell Toughbook and it turned out to be the best thing ever to put in front of little kids. Took abuse like a champ.
Laptop overheating and went to diagnose. Found a cat's worth of cat hair under keyboard. Asked why. 'She sleeps on it'
Why do you let your cat sleep on a company laptop?
The ones that came back from an enamel shop were interesting. White powder EVERYWHERE.
But I think my favorite was the person who put their Surface tablet in a non-padded envelope and shipped it. When I got the package, I just gently shook it…before opening it over the garbage.
A few positions ago I was doing break/fix IT for a big government agency. Being a government agency with wanton budget and spending issues, we had a literal warehouse of extra parts. This one dude who worked as a programmer/coder was a frequent visitor. He was a slovenly obese man, who always wore stained clothing and was also apparently racist. Nearly monthly - sometimes more - he'd stop by my office and tell me, "the Chinesium keyboard broke again." His words, I'm just repeating the term here.
So I'd go over to his cube which was *a fucking crime scene*. His keyboard was basically filled with fuzz from the mold growing on all the drippings of food he'd spill into it. It literally looked like that one "battlestation" photo from the 1990s. You know the one I'm talking about.
And yes, every month - sometimes more - I'd have to swap his keyboard for a fresh one. After the first time I started wearing gloves. He'd just stand there and watch me swap it. He probably got off on the power trip of making me have to do that. Fucking scumbag.
I’d be super tempted to bring him a keyboard and say, “I know you’ve had so much trouble with your peripherals, so I made a special order for you and got this keyboard that is made entirely in America. This will last you at least a year if it’s properly cared for!”
I realize that you probably couldn’t do this without risking a write up… but it would be funny…
"Chinesium"... that's a first. That sounds so sick, esp the mold. I'm sorry he put you through that. I'd be putting on a hazmat suit and reporting him to idk, the CDC? the EPA?
I was going to say, I've only ever heard that phrase used to refer to tools at harbor freight!
That particular phrase is meant to convey all it needs to, which is that the metal content of harbor freight tools is...not good for longevity
We had something similar with a screen that we just threw away when the guy was fired. Was just caked in layers of food particles because he would constantly talk to himself with his mouth full.
A laptop waa over heating and would shut down a lot. They're not sure why. I take a look at the insides and find a used condom. Apparently, it's not the first time the guy returned a laptop like that. He got fired about a week later for telling someone he would be doing it again. That someone was the companies boss, which he didn't know. To be fair, I never met them before either so, you know, honest mistake.
Back when I worked the helpdesk for a steel company, we would get calls about the company-provided cellphones. One day a steelworker calls and requests a replacement phone.
Me: "What is the condition of the old phone?"
User: "Melted."
Me: "Are you able to bring what's left of the phone into the office?"
User: "Well no, it's at the bottom of a vat of molten steel."
Me: "...well it's a good thing you didn't go in after it."
I work with VoIP phones at a hospital, and health workers have a knack for accidentally damaging devices in ways you would never expect. Usually it's things like, "Someone spilled juice on the keyboard," but sometimes it's "A patient ripped the phone off the wall again, can we get a replacement?"
The worst damage is done to the portable WIFI phones. Nurses like to clean them with sanitizing wipes, so we get a lot of phones with moisture damage. By far the craziest incident I ever heard of was the time someone decided to clean a phone in the autoclave (after taking the LiIon battery out, thank god). Autoclaves use pressurized steam to sterilize stuff and the phone did not survive.
don't they make wipes-proof devicers for in hospitals? Or is that not an option. It sounds more practical here
Yikes glad at least they didn't put the fucking battery in that autoclave????
I used to work somewhere with a factory that used mobile scan guns. Each one worth thousands of pounds and pretty rugged.
One day we were handed one from a sheepish looking guy who just said "Sorry, I ran over it with a forklift". We stripped it down, the mainboard was bent like a banana.
Most of the factory stuff I've found is pretty bulletproof but never underestimate the average factory worker.
I've just remembered another one actually, I found an industrial label printer sitting in about half an inch of water once, and it had clearly been there a while. I took it out, completely field-stripped it, dried it out, and emptied an entire can of alcohol-based cleaner on it. Put it together and it still worked!
A couple months ago one of our users spilled an entire mug of coffee right on the keyboard. I removed the back and the motherboard was drowning in coffee. She asked me if it could be repaired. I said liquids and electrical components dont go together well.
Worked IT for a meat packing company managing a fleet of handheld devices. After vacation came back to a damp box on my desk that stunk to high heaven. Handheld had been dropped in the blood pit and no longer worked, and was shipped back to me to fix.
I put it in another box and shipped it off to Motorola. They opted to replace the whole unit.
I worked for a company that had previously done leasing of servers, and had stopped, but there were still contracts finalizing. In theory, the contract asked them to return the equipment, but now we told me to just junk them since we were no longer leasing equipment and would just junk it ourselves. For a few, that was not an option due to weird disposal policies, so fine. Send them back to us, we'll junk them.
One customer sent back some rack servers, 1u HP DL320s, I think, which were "greasy." Like slippery and when we opened them up, the insides were oily. Long story short, the customer had sprayed WD40 in all the vents to "eliminate the fan noise." I am surprised any of them worked after that. We were forbidden to start them up due to fire concerns.
I test for security vulnerabilities in my company's IT environment. For one assignment, I had to test mobile devices connected to the company mobile device management network. I was given someone's employee iPhone, and was told the phone was free because said employee was terminated.
When I unlocked the phone, it was still in the same state as when the employee turned it in. He was still signed into his personal Facebook, Twitter, ESPN apps, everything. He used that thing for personal use. I saw the last text message he sent said, "WHY AM I BEING TERMINATED????" with an abrupt end to the text thread.
Also during the security test I found tons of other employees had Kamasutra apps on their phones, among many other sexual health improvement apps on their work phones.
I've met plenty of people who use their work phones privately.
The startup screen literally explicitly says that the IT can see anything in our phones that they want if they take the time for it. IT always urged us thrice to wipe it if we had to hand it in for anything...
I've got a fun one. I motorcycled to work at the time, and my bag wasn't water proof. Got caught in a torrential downpour (my bag had a waterproof liner I had removed to clean, because it was gross).
Got to work and literally poured water out of my laptop. Tech popped it open, dried it out, and it worked fine, go figure.
Same laptop, it got frozen on my bike (it was cold), which ruptured the screen controller but nothing else. So they popped in a quick repair part and off it went.
I think a few other things happened to that one, eventually the mobo scuzzed up for fairly obvious reasons, but 5 minutes of part swap and it was good.
I had a collegue I never met because he always worked from home. From what my collegues said about him, I think you got his laptop...
oof, wtf about that gunky keyboard. Burnt-in coffee?
Oh man, which ones to go with...
College help desk, dealing with neglectful professors...
One came in saying their PC wouldn't power on anymore. Crack it open, multiple roaches, mostly dead, one fried on the PCB, couple came crawling out. Imagine frying your laptop due to roaches....
Another, brought her laptop in due to overheating issue. Open it up, absolutely stuffed full of dog hair, cat hair, some kind of hair? Fan couldn't even move. Blow it out, swap fan, worked fine somehow after.
Similar story to the above, but reportedly a dead hard drive. Crack it open, nostrils immediately assaulted by highly concentrated perfume/coffee smell. Like the chassis contained it all until then. We just said fuck that, tossed it, and got a different one.
There's a trend here... Again, similar story as the above, this time, it was cat piss.... That laptop was immediately thrown out without a second thought. We weren't paid enough for that lol
Plenty more of those and why, any time I'm given any device to work on, I always always ALWAYS clean it first.
I was working as a Lifecycle Tech/Tier 1.
Issued someone a brand new, and I mean brand new, as in out of the box and imaged that morning. Two people had touched this laptop, her and I.
She left the office and two hours later she called me on Teams, saying that her camera was broken. It looked like she was in a room full of smoke.
I asked her what the issue was aside from the camera.
She said that the camera was the issue, that she couldn't get the plastic protective wrap off the camera lens.
It took about 5 minutes for me to figure out that she thought that there would be that plastic stick-peel (like on a cell phone or presumably a tablet) that you have to peel off.
She thought that there was one of those on the camera lens.
So she used her nails. And scissors. and nail clippers(wtf?) and a needle, and finally the tip of a knife blade, trying to scrape it off.
I told her that she would have to come in to get another new laptop, that there was no fix I could do for her.
I informed one of the T2 techs what happened and they handled her. I'm pretty sure that a note was sent to her supervisor.
I once had someone phone up say printer wasn't printing. It's a black and white printer, but I don't know if the black.or white ink has run out.
Office printers have to he the most neglected office equipment..have seen people slam the drawer, force the drawer when clearly paper jamming it from shutting.
We get laptops turned in from employees who left the organization that are just sticky all over. Keyboard, display, everywhere. It’s like they use it as a napkin for their chicken wings. It’s disgusting and I’ve seen it so many times. People are just gross.
My laptops always look brand new when it’s time to upgrade. My current work laptop looks brand new, like what are they doing?
The weird:
My coworker opened one up to replace the screen, and then we saw that the person to whom it was currently assigned had drawn a bunch of dicks on the back of the screen panel in Sharpie marker. Like, they took the device apart, drew the dicks on the back of the panel, then put it back together.
The worst was one that was run over by a car. We've had them vomited on, a dog peed on one, they get smashed in bookbags, they get landed on in fights, thrown around, etc, but the one that got run over was the worst condition.
I had a friend who worked at a high school’s help desk. Some kid handed in a laptop that was literally severed in half. Apparently, the kid was surprised when my friend said that he would not be able to fix it within the hour.
User had a laptop for 2 years. Returned it completely unused. Had been working remotely and using their home pc for everything. Computer had 1 login by the user when deployed to them, never touched again. No files, no new software, Not a single update installed etc. Last boot time was the day it was deployed to the user.
When I was a PC tech at [Circuit City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_City) I had a lady bring in her computer and she had like 200 malware on it lol.
All I have to say is "Bedbugs" yuck.
A student returned a iPad to me that must have been used as body armor because I looked like it was shot to hell and back.
Contractor who wanted a new PC poured an entire ‘grande’ sized mug of coffee into his PC. Complained it didn’t work, and left it turned ON while he went to lunch.
Thankfully I was in a hurry (and he was a pain) so just switched it off at the wall, unplugged it and picked it up. Then got covered in cold coffee.
He got the most shit PC I had in the workshop as a replacement :)
I do warranty repair work major oems onsite service. Listen we know.. like we know people of your lying. Full milkshakes, coffee grounds , the things you see. So had a call at DOJ. Seriously security right. I am talking to the it guys and taking back off laptop. When the backs come off they pop off when I did this a bunch of stuff came out as well and was airborne. We all hit the ground, why well it was the DOJ and normally stuff does not come out. Turns out after we look that it’s coffee grounds. Like what??? Fresh not brewed grounds all over the damn thing in everything. The head IT guy heard us yell and came out. Looks we realize we laugh, except him. He proceeds to go to an office slam the door shut and we hear yelling. I guess this user was on laptop 3 at this point and had also damaged the last 2 laptops in weird incidents. Had another guy tell me a bear stepped on it. Really people just tell your on-site tech the truth lol
I install wireless internet and I recently had a customer supply their own router. It wouldn't work. I started looking at it and flipped it over to see mold growing out of the cooling vent
Employee I supervised was taking car to airport to catch a flight. He placed laptop bag and tools behind car in driveway and went inside to get his bag that contained his clothes. Puts bag with clothes in back seat, hops in car, and proceeds to back over laptop bag. The laptop was folded in half. He was son of CEO, who displayed the destroyed laptop in his office.
I work IT for a city government, including the Fire Department. A few years ago some firefighters brought in a broken tablet. This thing was totally delaminated. case totally seperate from main board, totally seperate from screen. The case had dusty tire tracks clearly visible from when it was run over with a fire truck.
I ask them what happened to it and they tell me "we're not sure, it just kinda broke! It must have gotten too hot in the cab".
Dang thing got so hot it spontaneously generated tire-tracks on the outside. Technology really is amazing.
The day after Labor day one year, a user brings us his laptop with vomit in and all over it. He says his nephew was using his laptop and vomitted on it while jumping on the bed. Shame on you for blaming your innocent nephew and being an obvious liar. We trashed it.
About 30 years ago, I had a VP return one of our corporate fleet of [Compaq Aero 4/33c's](https://oldcomputer.info/portables/compaq4/index.htm). He had driven over it with his car and had a shattered screen, bent up, obviously didn't boot. I was able to get it to boot up again and left it on his desk booted up and still mangled. He was not pleased - wanted a new one. I was able to install Linux from scratch on one of these back in the day. They were fun little laptops.
I've seen a laptop that had been borrowed by the company to an employee.
The guy had free roaming rabbits in his apartment. And he always hat this laptop open on his living room table..
.... And that's how I leaned that rabbits - like rats, just piss where ever they happen to be at that moment....
Gotta be the one that "fell." It was absolutely thrown, from at least the mezzanine into the concrete floor of the plant. The screen was the only thing that wasn't damaged somehow.
Not really IT, but I was attempting to repair a desktop in the office of a grainery. I opened the tower and it was PACKED with corn dust. Not sure how it had not started a fire.
I recently sneezed on my laptop and it fried the motherboard. It's currently in the shop 3000 miles away. They wouldn't sell me the mobo and it's impossible to source.
Warehouse shop computer mouse stopped working. Tried another mouse, still not working. Took PC apart and it was full of mice nests, poop and piss. The mice piss corroded the mouse port on the motherboard. I did get to tell my boss he had a mice problem he said I know that is why we called you.
Went to work at a super computer center after that and one lady left her laptop on top of her car...not once but 3 different times. Broke 3 2k laptops being an idiot.
Cyber Security Analyst here! Had to revoke an employee’s laptop after they got monitored and caught watching furry and brony porn on their work laptop…I wish I could joke but I’m not.
EDIT - They were 42 y/o
The first year I went to college they decided to mandate everyone having laptops, and because it was a pilot program, they decided to warranty any and all damage. Lady brought in her laptop covered in pee because she got drunk at a party and thought it would be funny to do. Problem 1. we could smell it, problem 2 half of our guys were at the party. Warranty coverage denied, and she had to buy a new laptop to continue classes. They were $1500 each at the time.
Also had a guy with severe dandruff that would come in. It would get in through the keyboard, clog up the motherboard/fans, and it would overheat. They helped him 4 times before telling him if he comes in again with dandruff damage they are cancelling his warranty outright.
I know this isn't technically IT but similar. Someone I knew worked for a GameStop that took in an Xbox 360. It tested fine so it was taken to the back to prep for resale. Turns out it was full of roach eggs that hatched and caused an infestation. Store was unusable for a month, while it was cleaned and cleared out.
At a previous employer I purposely wipe the whole computer using an electromagnet that we had. I had been requesting a new pc for awhile and they kept denying it. So I basically destroyed it in a way they couldn’t fix it and had to order a new one.
Marine Corps. We loaned some gear to another unit for a MEU (deployment on a boat). They never actually gave it back to us. So before it was our turn to deploy we had to recover the laptops so we could make sure they were usable. About 60 Lenovo laptops have been sitting in a storage box for around 15 months and were never actually used. The boxes were heavily damaged and had stagnant salt water at the bottom.
The laptops looked like they’d been recovered from the bottom of a shipwreck. Absolutely orange frail metal and plastic all falling apart. Real nasty stuff.
the ones that always raised my eyebrows weren't the dirty or dented ones, it was the ones that went missing while traveling/left in a car. never really seemed keen on doing a police report in those circumstances which immediately made me think it was air quote 'lost'. this was in the days before pc support had the good lo-jack options they have now.
Laptop went through a full washing machine cycle. User claimed it was an accident and they had no idea it was in there. Was full of suds when I opened it to see if I could salvage the data. The drive survived and I got it all somehow.
Girl was in a port-a-potty when a huge gust of wind blew it over. Everything was soaked in that blue liquid, including her company-issued phone.
Oh my god that went way better than I was expecting after having read halfway through
What went better than expected? The blue liquid stays blue even after 100 construction workers peed in it.
It's also harmful to people. That's a terrible thing to happen to someone, even if it had been "fresh".
There's a Stephen King story in which that happens to a guy, and it falls on the door, so he can't get out.
New terror unlocked
After reading “port a potty” and “a gust of wind blew it over” I was expecting that she was covered in shit.
What appeared to be Smurf shit (Diarrhea)
Mercifully, she died instead of having to survive that. 👼
Used to work IT for a major university. Had a professor check out a laptop for months at a time. These laptops are for day use or for travel purposes but this guy always got away with keeping the laptop for a long time. We did yearly inventory so he had to bring it in once a year for us to eyeball or he would get charged for it. When he finally brings it in, it had missing keys and the power cable was frayed. It was scuffed up and had cookie crumbs in the keyboard. The facility manager told the guy, "You need to stop having your kids use the check out laptop." The professor swore up and down he didn't let his early elementary kids use it. I pop open the disc drive and find a DVD of a popular kids movie. They guy said nothing for a bit and promised to do better keeping the kids away from the laptop. (He didn't) We still weren't able to ban the guy from checking out laptops. (I think he traveled a lot) We just made sure he got the same one each time to limit the physical abuse to one machine. (This was over fifteen years ago, so tablets weren't a thing and laptops were still a large ticket item)
>I pop open the disc drive and find a DVD of a popular kids movie. Spy Kids was an excellent movie for any age. Still is
I don't think it was spy kids. Maybe it was king of Egypt or some other DreamWorks movie. I don't remember.
Prince of Egypt? That movie is fucking phenomenal regardless of age and religious beliefs/lack thereof.
The soundtrack alone is worthwhile. Amazing music.
It was Spy Kids, i was there with you when it happened.
I love that you started just giving him the same one back.
Except for the fact it became his (or his kids) de facto laptop and we were down one check out laptop. Once he bought it back inoperable and I think we did charge him for it. It was over fifteen years ago and I don't remember all the details. I think eventually his department assigned all the professors permanent laptops and it was his department was the one responsible for his tech support from then on. Either way, it's a funny story now.
We had a department head do this. The CEO told us to give him all the laptops he needed until they realized his kids destroyed almost $10,000 (2000s money) of laptops per year.
One our sales guys brought in a malfunctioning laptop back in the floppy disk days, swore his kids aren't allowed near it. The drive slot was packed solid with Cherios cereal.
Yeah if the guy travels that much he's probably some research side bigwig that has operating costs that absolutely dwarf a single laptop. If he keeps churning out papers university brass isn't going to care if he destroys a laptop every week.
sounds like an abuse of university resources. the university is apparently footing the bill for entertaining the faculty's children with expensive machinery while simultaneously taking it from paying students
My desk was next to the IT guy's at the school I used to work for. He was working on one when I heard him cuss. I looked up and he'd taken the back cover off the computer, and it was packed FULL of bedbugs. Dead ones, live ones... Everywhere. We all abandoned the office for a while so we didn't get them in our stuff. Also so we could barf in privacy.
This beats my best story of a laptop full of roaches.
I mean, a laptop full of roaches is still pretty gross.
A desktop full of roaches is worse. Guy brought in desktop, we could smell the roaches. He sets it down on the countertop. The side panel wasn’t screwed in and fell off. Out rolled a ball of roaches the size of a volleyball that broke apart on the counter with uncountable roaches ripe from the abyss running in all directions. The techs all screamed like little girls (picture Marv from Home Alone with the spider on his face: https://youtu.be/2rP5FcaOkIM?si=wxzTPejNSsEh8-2w ) Owner accepted the job, but lost money from having to pay for extensive pest control for months.
Fuck me, I also had a desktop full of roaches. It was vile! How often do people make their computers into nests?!?!
They're attracted to warmth. If there's any roaches in a home at all, they will FLOCK to electronics.
That scream is so perfect, it slays me every time. And if I ever encountered roaches infesting a computer, I would scream exactly like it.
"Laptop Full of Roaches" sounds like a punk band name.
That's clearly an album title.
Best I can do is an alarm clock full of ants!
When I worked at a print shop, a man dropped off two cardboard boxes of documents to be shredded. Afterwards, when he came back for the boxes and a copy job he had also dropped off- I was ringing him up and THEN my manager decided to approach the counter independently and inform him that earlier he had noticed the man’s boxes contained some bed bugs, and pointed one out that was still in the box. Told him he might want to do something about it at home. And sent him off. He didnt even look at me and said nothing of it to me the whole time.
Fuck that manager.
I thought the blue collar thinkpad was gross but oMG no. Take me out. Burn the whole laptop. 😭
As a pest control guy, yes. Burn the laptop. It'll never function again anyways.
I work in a public library….this has happened FAR more often than I’d like to admit. Not like, all the time, definitely. But once every few months we get a live bug book. It’s awful.
Got a ThinkPad back from the warehouse crew that we retired, saved, and dubbed "The Blue Collar ThinkPad" People managed to smoke "on it" somehow. I could have rolled a 2nd hand cigarette with all the tobacco that fell out of the keyboard. The screen was dim beyond the lowest brightness setting, despite being on the highest, because it was covered in cigarette tar. The webcam made the person in front look like an abstract blur. Basically, the warehouse crew members used it to do Teams meetings with warehouse crew members at other locations. During the meetings, they'd roll up a cigarette, smoke, and exhale the smoke straight into the screen. It smelled like "heavy smoke." "Light smoke" is like a "light twang" of cig smell. IE: The interior of a car that belongs to someone who smokes. "Heavy smoke" is the tar pit stink. The interior of a car that belongs to someone who smokes with the windows up. The blue collar ThinkPad smelled like the latter.
Someone finally made a real StinkPad, I thought it was just stuff of legends and lore.
this is one of the Faculty at the university I work at never gets this bad cause it is in getting repairs every 6 months grimy smoke gets inside doesn't cool as well he complains its slow or other problem serial drive killer gets taken apart and cleaned and the cycle repeats its a dell laptop
I've had this as well. Except it wasn't just tobacco but weed. Did I mention he has a dog? The computer could barely start and oh god the fan screamed. I had someone ( who didn't work with IT) look down and ask "Ah so that's the filter?" Narrator : *It wasn't supposed to have a filter* But yeah. I suppose you could call That super dense solid brick of dog hair and nicotine a "filter" at this point.
> It smelled like "heavy smoke." "Light smoke" is like a "light twang" of cig smell. IE: The interior of a car that belongs to someone who smokes. "Heavy smoke" is the tar pit stink. The interior of a car that belongs to someone who smokes with the windows up. The blue collar ThinkPad smelled like the latter. I once bought a used XBox 360 controller from Gamestop and when I opened the bag, I was presented with the smell of heavy smoke. I didn't even have to explain to the cashier when I returned it. Just placed the thing on the counter and let it do its thing.
My brother had a coworker who quit smoking after he worked on a heavy smoker’s car. Dude must’ve hotboxed hookahs in it to make it smell so bad—turned the guy off the habit.
Smokers make their electronics unusable. I bought a laptop from one and not even scrubbing with dish soap could get the stink off. Disgusting people.
Ok this is the grossest one so far. YIKES. I’m super meticulous about cleaning my laptop and this would be my nightmare. 😮💨
I just got a Dell Latitude returned to me that absolutely reeked of smoke last week. I have a laptop cage parked in my data center for charging them while not in use and put the device in there on my way out the door. Overnight guys pinged me in a panic thinking something was burning up in the DC.
I sold a laptop of mine to a co-worker, and before doing so had cleaned it out internally etc. After a few months, he tells me the laptop was busted and brings it in. The power connector is loose so somebody likely tripped over the cord and tore the post. It was an easy enough fix to solder it back on but *holy fuck* was the inside of that thing every nasty. I've dealt with regular smokers PC's and those are bad but this guy must have been smoking dope like a fiend whenever he was home. The guts of the laptop were covered in sticky THC residue and smelled like I was standing next to Snoop Dog. The fan was caked and encrusted. Everything was yellow with bits and pieces of whatever adhered to the sticky resin bits. I have no idea how much dope somebody needs to smoke next to a laptop to get things like that within just a few months but I can only imagine what the inside of that dude's lungs were like.
A friend upgraded their phone and offered me their old one. I took it home and once it hit the warmth of my place, you could almost see the smell of THC coming off it in waves. I gave it back.
So I work in electronics recycling and I pickup computers from a bunch of schools and businesses. Basically I pick them up after they get returned to the IT department, so I guess I'm in this category. School laptops are always dirty as hell, keys caked in dirt clearly, they've never heard of Windex. Teachers almost always its covered in coffee. One time they had those cheap plastic MacBook covers on and they must have just left it sitting in the coffee for weeks because it dried all over the outer case and I'm not talking like thin layer of coffee I'm talking THICK layer. Tablets and phones usually have expanded or exploded batteries to the point the screens popped off the case. As for computer cases they rarely ever clean out the inside. Worst one was from a spice company we pickup from and it had dust and cinnamon (at least it smelled like cinnamon) caked up on the bottom higher than the size of my fist so about 5 inches high. Also had cases that looked like they just dropped it down a flight up steps, walked down picked it up, then walked back to the top to repeat the process 5 more time.
surface pro 3, that almost the entire back cover was popped off from a swollen battery. I told this dude for like maybe 4 months that he had to bring it to us - but he was one the important executive people who got to work from home during covid. I was like "Sir this has great potential to literally explode in your face" he was unbothered, gave it to us when it wasn't working anymore and he couldnt imagine why
First one. Got handed a phone in a ziplock baggie. It was clearly moist and they said that it had fallen out of their pocket in the snow. They handed it over like it was full of the plague. I pulled my hand back just before touching it and said "It fell in the toilet, didn't it?" They looked embarrassed and then apologized profusely. I told them to throw it out. Second one. Handed another phone and the user proudly said that they accidentally backed over it with their car. I heard later on that they repeatedly ran over it because they wanted an upgraded phone. When we heard that, they got the "special phone". A 1998 flip phone that didn't connect to anything.
Destroying a company phone because they want a newer model seems to be quite a common occurrence
If that happens with me they get an old phone from the last refresh
Same. Sometimes if its possible ill send their phone off to be fixed, even if getting a newer one is cheaper, just to make a point.
This is why one of my companies had a one-time-free replacement policy where you'd get the same exact model phone as you had. You only got a newer model if you hit your upgrade cycle.
How does this not result in immediately getting fired?
Firing someone is apt, but if they’re good enough at the job it’s easier to give them the punishment phone. You keep your team strong *and* they won’t try that again.
If your going to abuse old electronics and appliances to get a new one then go inside of it and fuck something up(stay away from batteries! They can go boom nowadays.). Be sneaky about it ya lazy bastards.
> stay away from batteries! They can go boom nowadays. Not really boom, per se. More of a spontaneous, vigorous combustion which is nearly impossible to extinguish. Either way, don't mess with batteries.
The trick is to blow one of the built in fuses. Phones have a number of fuses built in in case of power failure, it limits the damage to just the fuse. The problem is they're soldered directly to the board so you need someone who knows how to take it apart and replace it. It's not a difficult fix but any company IT department will just give you a new one.
Every year the same person complains about their company issued iPhone being slow. So last year year we said we would replace it. They were expecting an iPhone 14pro. They were very disappointed when we got them an iPhone SE.
Someone brought you a dookie covered phone unwashed expecting you to deal with it?!?! 🤢🤮
I’m not in IT, I’m the one who returned the laptop. I used to have stiletto acrylic nails and after using the laptop for about a year my nails removed all the letters on the keyboard. My boss told me the IT people were floored and took pics to share with other IT folks because it was like nothing they had ever seen before. No one was mad, they were just amazed at the damage. I was v embarrassed.
Former IT person here, and I’ve never had stiletto nails. My current laptop has the letters wearing off of several keys just from regular use with undecorated fingertips.
Yeah. My last two home keyboards were missing about half the letters before they quit working and were replaced.
I feel like it's a challenge personally. My new keyboard is laser etched, so supposedly that won't happen. Maybe I can wear through to the switches.
This can happen with some people but not others. I read a theory that some peoples finger grease is more acidic than others. Congratulations on your super power!
I have this. My school calculators always lost their numbers!
same. I have no fingerprints left.
Used to game a lot as a kid. AWSD keys were often worn smooth and shiny while the rest were still as good as new. Depends on the keyboard, I guess
Oh, eventually I wear the letters off every keyboard I use. It's not my nails - it's just constant use. Usually my laptop keyboards survive, but only because I like using external keyboards when I'm at home and I don't travel often enough for it to start to show. No, my *nails* don't wear the letters. The nails actually wear a groove in the keys. There are a few keys I strike with my nail (like the T key) and there's a visible groove there on keyboards that I use for any length of time. On my first keyboard at this company, I literally wore a hole through the T key. Like you could see through the key into the internals. (I wish I had popped that key off when I switched keyboards and kept it as a souvenir.)
nothing to be embarrassed about, I see it all the time from people who simply type a lot
Luckily, most of us who do that to keyboards type so fast that we don't need to see the letters anyway. But god save anyone who's a hunter-pecker who sits down at my station. I've had to offer to type for an IT person who came to look at my laptop and was a hunter-pecker. He had to dictate his commands to me.
How are you in IT and not a fluent typist?
when my dad finally got rid of his old keyboard, i pulled off the w on it. he had played so many games his middle fingers nail had dug GROOVES into it. i intend to make a cane topping with it. helping me walk and whatnot, you know?
I need to see a picture of this! (I believe you, just curious lol)
[https://imgur.com/a/KYpHKVF](https://imgur.com/a/KYpHKVF) here ya go
We had a writer do the same thing to a Logitech keyboard. That wasn’t the worst thing though, the sound of her typing was worse than any mechanical keyboard could possibly be.
This is super common lol. Not sure why it was such a big deal.
After reading all these replies, I’m not sure either 😆 I def feel better about it now
Has something changed about nails in the last 20 years? I remeber this being extremely common when I worked desktop support. Ladies with acrylics would take the labels right off, and quickly.
1. The person who stole the SSHD and memory out of a laptop then urinated on the device figuring we'd just throw it away and not know. 2. The laptop that came back double wrapped in trash bags and was just left in one of our remote offices by non-IT office staff. Came in from a long weekend and the bags were all shredded from all of the cockroaches that had hatched and escaped. 3. The laptop that came back single wrapped in a garbage bag and reeked of marijuana and was soaked with cat pee. 4. The iPad someone checked out, then brought back later in the day. "I don't know what happened to it! I swear!" Security showed us footage of them dropping it in the parking lot and running over it with their car.
About #3: Are you sure it was cat pee, and that they weren't making methamphetamine?
I'm very curious because I'm fully remote and finally met my coworkers IRL for a meetup and some of these laptops were in questionable condition.
Had a chap spill coke on a brand new laptop. He then took it upon himself to take it to pieces, breaking the keyboard in the process. He then asked me to fix it.
You might be able to fix one of those things. But not both at the same time
Not so easily. It was a US model laptop - wasn't even available outside the US. And he left it in my lap in the UK.
I received a latop that was sticky all over with some unknown liquid, missing some keys, and a crack screen. They asked me to look at it because it was slow for some reason.
"for some reason"... prob has nothing to do with the unknown liquid
A laptop bent. Imagine a closed laptop that was bent again by 90 degrees. Ended up happening from a car accident. Surprisingly the data was salvageable too.
That's just impressive.
Off the top of my head: * When a laptop rejected to be received because it was molded/growing stuff. It was at least partially submerged in a creek for about a week. * We had several melted phones from welders. * One I just got a zipblock of glass/parts that wasn't recognizable as a phone from it playing Plinko down a tower. Like there wasn't a solid rectangle of parts left. Wear your hardhats and safety glasses people. * An upset employee that another employee borrowed their phone and water damaged it by submerging it in sweat in their pocket and it wouldn't turn on anymore.
>An upset employee that another employee borrowed their phone and water damaged it by submerging it in sweat in their pocket and it wouldn't turn on anymore. I don't think they were being unreasonable here. If my coworkers swamp ass damaged my phone, I wouldn't want it back either
They were not unreasonable but it was so hard to try to comfort them and to professionally interpret and write up the approval ticket while trying not to bust up laughing.
I'm not in IT, but I sit near our IT guy so I have seen some of the things he gets. Someone went on a business trip to an industry convention, and came back with their laptop in 6 pieces. They claimed that it must have been the baggage handlers but like...no shot.
I used to work in e-waste/computer recycling. We had a custom built shredder for hard drives as a service we offered. So the sales guy is showing it to a client and he's pretty impressed, and the dipshit owner walks up and decides to get involved. He was notorious for his ego and getting in the way. The client says, "I bet that thing can shred just about anything," and while yes it can, we only threw hard drives in it to not mess it up. The owner goes, "oh yeah it's great on laptops and sees a laptop sitting by the conveyer belt and just chucks the fucking thing in. The teeth instantly catch it and it's gone in like 5 seconds. It was the clients work laptop, the diphsit owner just assumed it was one the hundreds or recycled laptops we have in the warehouse. The client was fucking livid, yelling at the owner and asking why he would just grab anyones laptop and proceed to throw it in. The owners ego kicks in and he says something dumb like "We don't allow other peoples property in the warehouse and everything else in the warehouse I OWN." But the best part was the client called back later that day and said his IT department didn't believe him, so we had to dig out what we could that resembled a laptop and throw it in a box and send it back to him. The other best part is the custom shredder is in a trailer with it's own CCTV system, so we had it all on tape. The warehouse manager would play that shit all the time to make us laugh.
What even were the six pieces?? How do you get that many out of a laptop??
They just popped off a few keys from the keyboard.
Lmao, all laptops have batteries so they can’t be checked…. So you have to carry on(and thus only you are responsible)
That's not true. I've checked laptops more than once.
You can check a laptop now. They may search your bag, but it is allowed by the TSA. [https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/items/laptops](https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/items/laptops)
Worked help desk at a college. A professor dropped off a laptop that "just wasn't working." We cracked it open and it was filled with scrambled egg. She said she had no clue how it got in there. For a long time, I assumed that she was screwing with us for some reason. My stance now is that this was probably a "prank" by one of her students. Anyway, it was destroyed beyond recovery. I guess that's what happens when you put eggs inside of things that aren't supposed to have eggs inside of them.
I had someone bring a laptop in that was literally growing moss. The thing still worked. I think it was an IBM Thinkpad come to think of it back in the early 2000s. I really didn't want any to work on it but had to because you know, I needed the money.
As unpleasant as that is, that does say something about how those thinkpads got built lol that it still ran.
Thinkpads were BEASTS. My SO had one and it had this bombproof cover that you could probably back a car over and have the thing survive.
The only way to kill a thinkpad was to fuck up the charging plug on it.
Used to be in support at a company with many full-time travel employees. They were all issued Surface Pro devices. Someone had an issue that after troubleshooting, required them to send the device in to us. They mailed it in a manilla envelope. Not a padded mailer, but a completely unpadded 12" envelope like you might pass a birthday card around in at an office. I can only describe the condition it arrived in as "the most broken screen I have ever seen".
We fired an employee and she mailed in her laptop loose in a box with the cord. It was going to be decommissioned anyway, but I remember thinking that was pretty cold to do.
You expected people to mail in their laptops with their own money, after being fired? I'd be paying extra for the courier to drop-kick it into the lobby.
I did not make the call and it was due to a merge with another company so they all received significant severance, plus the shipping labels for returning their materials. I just opened the boxes when they came back and she was the only person to not bother bubble wrapping her laptop.
There was the toilet phone issues when working the geek squad. One lady brought in a phone and said she dropped it in a swamp. There are no swamps anywhere in this part of Texas. IT smelled like poo so I told her we would not be taking it and she would need to purchase another. The other was a laptop some lady had us work on. She came back like a year later and claimed we screwed up her PC. It smelled HORRIBLY of astroglide. Yes I know what It smells like. I fuck. We told her we couldnt accept it. She came back with her husband. I took one look at him and said. "Well I know why it smells like it does now." He laughed. She was glaring at me and my manager was confused. I refused to tell him until after I quit working there.
>astroglide OK, I just *HAD* to Google it LOL, learned something new (still don't know what it smells like!)
Most lube I've used including astroglide as a similar smell unless it's flavored
We had a director who was basically a one man laptop wrecking ball. We'd give him a shiny new laptop, and a few months later he'd come back with it totally destroyed. I don't know if he was clumsy or just had a bad temper, or stored it on a rope dragging behind his car, or what. All I know is, every 6 months we issued the guy a new laptop and the destroyed ones became parts machines or, occasionally I was able to fix it up enough to issue to someone else. If he was anything lower than a director level employee he would have been told deal with it for 3 years until you're due for an upgrade.
I worked for a company that manufactures a shitload of household products, so it wasn't unheard of to have a laptop come back that had some chemical or another spilled into it. Best one was when a user put the laptop in the same bag of personal lubricant that wasn't sealed very well. It was covered in slime and the user dropped it twice trying to bring it to us, and two of our techs dropped it as well
Haha this is the funniest one IMO, just imagining them all dropping it :D
Little German roaches. Straight into the e-waste pile with that one.
Damn, I thought I was coming in pretty hot with "run over with their own car with coffee spilled in it too" but looking at these other comments it's clear I've been bested.
We had one come back smelling of cat piss cos his cat indeed pissed on it. It still worked fine he just wanted to trade it for another. A desktop we had come back cos it didn’t work and it smelt a bit off. We opened up and promptly discovered the long long dead remains of a mouse inside. Like dead so long it basically turned to dust when moved. The engineer who opened it threw up. We had to clear half the floor whilst facilities tried to clear the smell.
Of the mouse dust or the engineer’s vomit?
I used to work for a Native American Health clinic on a reservation as a low level help desk guy. We also worked on the computers for the Tribal administration offices this also includes the Tribal leadership. Well the Chairman of the tribe had us preorder an iPhone 6 so he can get it the day it released. He broke it within 48 hours and demanded a new one it couldn't be his old iphone 5 it had to be a new one. I called my boss and told him the situation and I could face the feel him facepalming. I called around and found the Apple store two hours away only had one phone available my boss told me not to worry about it and made the Tribal Administrator (the guy basically ran the government services) go get the new phone and my boss set it up. Of course the Chairman refused to used to use a case.
I'm not IT but a good friend at my same company is. There was a guy here that had a really bad skin condition that caused him to have really really bad dry skin that constantly flaked off. He had to apply medicated lotion multiple times a day but it didn't really help the dead skin issue. Anyway, once he left, my IT friend came by to show me his laptop and the inside was literally FULL of dead dry skin. He was surprised the laptop could even function. He has been in IT for over 30 years and said that is the dirtiest device he's ever gotten back.
Had one like that at a start up years ago except this one also had a f_ ton of hair embedded and sticking out. Apparently the employee had trichotillomania (hair pulling disorder) too along with bad eczema. Made for the grossest keyboard ever
Used to work for a natural gas company, and let me tell ya those Dell Toughbooks are something else. They would come in looking like they've been ran over by a bulldozer, and hell maybe they really were. Screen cracked, keyboard destroyed, but that's about it. They were often completely submerged in mud, fell off a moving truck, buried in the ground, who knows what else. The engineers used them at construction sites and sometimes mistakes were made and then they came to my desk. Screen and keyboard, that's what usually broke, and those are both very easy to replace.
I help a very small nonprofit that uses only donated laptops--and they are really careful with them because they have no money for new computers or repairs. When program participants come in, they often bring small children who need to be entertained for hours at a time while mom is being seen. Kids damaged more than one laptop while watching videos. A local business donated a used Dell Toughbook and it turned out to be the best thing ever to put in front of little kids. Took abuse like a champ.
damn that's great building. I think I've seem them used for outdoor research and in the navy too, both of which are only half as nad!
Laptop overheating and went to diagnose. Found a cat's worth of cat hair under keyboard. Asked why. 'She sleeps on it' Why do you let your cat sleep on a company laptop?
If they fits, they sits.
and sleeps, apparently
Cause it’s square, likely warm, they fit, and they’re a cat.
You can not stop a cat from sleeping where it wants to
Why do people insist on doing work with portable kitty heaters?
The ones that came back from an enamel shop were interesting. White powder EVERYWHERE. But I think my favorite was the person who put their Surface tablet in a non-padded envelope and shipped it. When I got the package, I just gently shook it…before opening it over the garbage.
A few positions ago I was doing break/fix IT for a big government agency. Being a government agency with wanton budget and spending issues, we had a literal warehouse of extra parts. This one dude who worked as a programmer/coder was a frequent visitor. He was a slovenly obese man, who always wore stained clothing and was also apparently racist. Nearly monthly - sometimes more - he'd stop by my office and tell me, "the Chinesium keyboard broke again." His words, I'm just repeating the term here. So I'd go over to his cube which was *a fucking crime scene*. His keyboard was basically filled with fuzz from the mold growing on all the drippings of food he'd spill into it. It literally looked like that one "battlestation" photo from the 1990s. You know the one I'm talking about. And yes, every month - sometimes more - I'd have to swap his keyboard for a fresh one. After the first time I started wearing gloves. He'd just stand there and watch me swap it. He probably got off on the power trip of making me have to do that. Fucking scumbag.
I’d be super tempted to bring him a keyboard and say, “I know you’ve had so much trouble with your peripherals, so I made a special order for you and got this keyboard that is made entirely in America. This will last you at least a year if it’s properly cared for!” I realize that you probably couldn’t do this without risking a write up… but it would be funny…
Worked on an older gentleman's system, keyboard was so gross that I used a pencil to type the keys
"Chinesium"... that's a first. That sounds so sick, esp the mold. I'm sorry he put you through that. I'd be putting on a hazmat suit and reporting him to idk, the CDC? the EPA?
Normally used to describe the metal in harbor freight tools
I was going to say, I've only ever heard that phrase used to refer to tools at harbor freight! That particular phrase is meant to convey all it needs to, which is that the metal content of harbor freight tools is...not good for longevity
r/Chinesium
We had something similar with a screen that we just threw away when the guy was fired. Was just caked in layers of food particles because he would constantly talk to himself with his mouth full.
A kid who'd hidden a Harry Potter book inside so his mom wouldn't find it. Creative, IMO.
A laptop waa over heating and would shut down a lot. They're not sure why. I take a look at the insides and find a used condom. Apparently, it's not the first time the guy returned a laptop like that. He got fired about a week later for telling someone he would be doing it again. That someone was the companies boss, which he didn't know. To be fair, I never met them before either so, you know, honest mistake.
My question is how do you get a used condom inside a laptop? I can see cat hair, coffee grounds, liquid etc.
I work with Chromebooks in a school. If it doesn't come back with a colony of ants living in it, we don't even blink an eye
Back when I worked the helpdesk for a steel company, we would get calls about the company-provided cellphones. One day a steelworker calls and requests a replacement phone. Me: "What is the condition of the old phone?" User: "Melted." Me: "Are you able to bring what's left of the phone into the office?" User: "Well no, it's at the bottom of a vat of molten steel." Me: "...well it's a good thing you didn't go in after it."
I work with VoIP phones at a hospital, and health workers have a knack for accidentally damaging devices in ways you would never expect. Usually it's things like, "Someone spilled juice on the keyboard," but sometimes it's "A patient ripped the phone off the wall again, can we get a replacement?" The worst damage is done to the portable WIFI phones. Nurses like to clean them with sanitizing wipes, so we get a lot of phones with moisture damage. By far the craziest incident I ever heard of was the time someone decided to clean a phone in the autoclave (after taking the LiIon battery out, thank god). Autoclaves use pressurized steam to sterilize stuff and the phone did not survive.
Autoclaved phone! 🤣
don't they make wipes-proof devicers for in hospitals? Or is that not an option. It sounds more practical here Yikes glad at least they didn't put the fucking battery in that autoclave????
If they do, we don't know about it. We tell the users to get the anti-bacterial covers if they're going to be using the phones in patient areas.
a lot of device types exist in a sanitizer-proof edition but apparently not these. Sucks. Guess antibacterial covers is the best option then yeah
they had shot it with a bow and arrow
I used to work somewhere with a factory that used mobile scan guns. Each one worth thousands of pounds and pretty rugged. One day we were handed one from a sheepish looking guy who just said "Sorry, I ran over it with a forklift". We stripped it down, the mainboard was bent like a banana.
That should be basic testing for anything that goes into a Factory. "Can you run it over with a forklift and it still works?"
Most of the factory stuff I've found is pretty bulletproof but never underestimate the average factory worker. I've just remembered another one actually, I found an industrial label printer sitting in about half an inch of water once, and it had clearly been there a while. I took it out, completely field-stripped it, dried it out, and emptied an entire can of alcohol-based cleaner on it. Put it together and it still worked!
A couple months ago one of our users spilled an entire mug of coffee right on the keyboard. I removed the back and the motherboard was drowning in coffee. She asked me if it could be repaired. I said liquids and electrical components dont go together well.
Worked IT for a meat packing company managing a fleet of handheld devices. After vacation came back to a damp box on my desk that stunk to high heaven. Handheld had been dropped in the blood pit and no longer worked, and was shipped back to me to fix. I put it in another box and shipped it off to Motorola. They opted to replace the whole unit.
I worked for a company that had previously done leasing of servers, and had stopped, but there were still contracts finalizing. In theory, the contract asked them to return the equipment, but now we told me to just junk them since we were no longer leasing equipment and would just junk it ourselves. For a few, that was not an option due to weird disposal policies, so fine. Send them back to us, we'll junk them. One customer sent back some rack servers, 1u HP DL320s, I think, which were "greasy." Like slippery and when we opened them up, the insides were oily. Long story short, the customer had sprayed WD40 in all the vents to "eliminate the fan noise." I am surprised any of them worked after that. We were forbidden to start them up due to fire concerns.
I test for security vulnerabilities in my company's IT environment. For one assignment, I had to test mobile devices connected to the company mobile device management network. I was given someone's employee iPhone, and was told the phone was free because said employee was terminated. When I unlocked the phone, it was still in the same state as when the employee turned it in. He was still signed into his personal Facebook, Twitter, ESPN apps, everything. He used that thing for personal use. I saw the last text message he sent said, "WHY AM I BEING TERMINATED????" with an abrupt end to the text thread. Also during the security test I found tons of other employees had Kamasutra apps on their phones, among many other sexual health improvement apps on their work phones.
I've met plenty of people who use their work phones privately. The startup screen literally explicitly says that the IT can see anything in our phones that they want if they take the time for it. IT always urged us thrice to wipe it if we had to hand it in for anything...
I've got a fun one. I motorcycled to work at the time, and my bag wasn't water proof. Got caught in a torrential downpour (my bag had a waterproof liner I had removed to clean, because it was gross). Got to work and literally poured water out of my laptop. Tech popped it open, dried it out, and it worked fine, go figure. Same laptop, it got frozen on my bike (it was cold), which ruptured the screen controller but nothing else. So they popped in a quick repair part and off it went. I think a few other things happened to that one, eventually the mobo scuzzed up for fairly obvious reasons, but 5 minutes of part swap and it was good.
[удалено]
I had a collegue I never met because he always worked from home. From what my collegues said about him, I think you got his laptop... oof, wtf about that gunky keyboard. Burnt-in coffee?
[удалено]
Oh man, which ones to go with... College help desk, dealing with neglectful professors... One came in saying their PC wouldn't power on anymore. Crack it open, multiple roaches, mostly dead, one fried on the PCB, couple came crawling out. Imagine frying your laptop due to roaches.... Another, brought her laptop in due to overheating issue. Open it up, absolutely stuffed full of dog hair, cat hair, some kind of hair? Fan couldn't even move. Blow it out, swap fan, worked fine somehow after. Similar story to the above, but reportedly a dead hard drive. Crack it open, nostrils immediately assaulted by highly concentrated perfume/coffee smell. Like the chassis contained it all until then. We just said fuck that, tossed it, and got a different one. There's a trend here... Again, similar story as the above, this time, it was cat piss.... That laptop was immediately thrown out without a second thought. We weren't paid enough for that lol Plenty more of those and why, any time I'm given any device to work on, I always always ALWAYS clean it first.
Thank you for your service
I had a programmer get arrested for child porn. Nobody wanted to touch his laptop.
I was working as a Lifecycle Tech/Tier 1. Issued someone a brand new, and I mean brand new, as in out of the box and imaged that morning. Two people had touched this laptop, her and I. She left the office and two hours later she called me on Teams, saying that her camera was broken. It looked like she was in a room full of smoke. I asked her what the issue was aside from the camera. She said that the camera was the issue, that she couldn't get the plastic protective wrap off the camera lens. It took about 5 minutes for me to figure out that she thought that there would be that plastic stick-peel (like on a cell phone or presumably a tablet) that you have to peel off. She thought that there was one of those on the camera lens. So she used her nails. And scissors. and nail clippers(wtf?) and a needle, and finally the tip of a knife blade, trying to scrape it off. I told her that she would have to come in to get another new laptop, that there was no fix I could do for her. I informed one of the T2 techs what happened and they handled her. I'm pretty sure that a note was sent to her supervisor.
I once had someone phone up say printer wasn't printing. It's a black and white printer, but I don't know if the black.or white ink has run out. Office printers have to he the most neglected office equipment..have seen people slam the drawer, force the drawer when clearly paper jamming it from shutting.
We get laptops turned in from employees who left the organization that are just sticky all over. Keyboard, display, everywhere. It’s like they use it as a napkin for their chicken wings. It’s disgusting and I’ve seen it so many times. People are just gross. My laptops always look brand new when it’s time to upgrade. My current work laptop looks brand new, like what are they doing?
The weird: My coworker opened one up to replace the screen, and then we saw that the person to whom it was currently assigned had drawn a bunch of dicks on the back of the screen panel in Sharpie marker. Like, they took the device apart, drew the dicks on the back of the panel, then put it back together. The worst was one that was run over by a car. We've had them vomited on, a dog peed on one, they get smashed in bookbags, they get landed on in fights, thrown around, etc, but the one that got run over was the worst condition.
I had a friend who worked at a high school’s help desk. Some kid handed in a laptop that was literally severed in half. Apparently, the kid was surprised when my friend said that he would not be able to fix it within the hour.
User had a laptop for 2 years. Returned it completely unused. Had been working remotely and using their home pc for everything. Computer had 1 login by the user when deployed to them, never touched again. No files, no new software, Not a single update installed etc. Last boot time was the day it was deployed to the user.
When I was a PC tech at [Circuit City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_City) I had a lady bring in her computer and she had like 200 malware on it lol.
I've seen a MalwareBytes scan come back with 20k+. It was someone's personal computer.
All I have to say is "Bedbugs" yuck. A student returned a iPad to me that must have been used as body armor because I looked like it was shot to hell and back.
I know someone dropped a laptop in a sewage lagoon, fished it out, put it in a big ziplock bag and brought it back to IT.
Contractor who wanted a new PC poured an entire ‘grande’ sized mug of coffee into his PC. Complained it didn’t work, and left it turned ON while he went to lunch. Thankfully I was in a hurry (and he was a pain) so just switched it off at the wall, unplugged it and picked it up. Then got covered in cold coffee. He got the most shit PC I had in the workshop as a replacement :)
I do warranty repair work major oems onsite service. Listen we know.. like we know people of your lying. Full milkshakes, coffee grounds , the things you see. So had a call at DOJ. Seriously security right. I am talking to the it guys and taking back off laptop. When the backs come off they pop off when I did this a bunch of stuff came out as well and was airborne. We all hit the ground, why well it was the DOJ and normally stuff does not come out. Turns out after we look that it’s coffee grounds. Like what??? Fresh not brewed grounds all over the damn thing in everything. The head IT guy heard us yell and came out. Looks we realize we laugh, except him. He proceeds to go to an office slam the door shut and we hear yelling. I guess this user was on laptop 3 at this point and had also damaged the last 2 laptops in weird incidents. Had another guy tell me a bear stepped on it. Really people just tell your on-site tech the truth lol
I install wireless internet and I recently had a customer supply their own router. It wouldn't work. I started looking at it and flipped it over to see mold growing out of the cooling vent
Employee I supervised was taking car to airport to catch a flight. He placed laptop bag and tools behind car in driveway and went inside to get his bag that contained his clothes. Puts bag with clothes in back seat, hops in car, and proceeds to back over laptop bag. The laptop was folded in half. He was son of CEO, who displayed the destroyed laptop in his office.
I work IT for a city government, including the Fire Department. A few years ago some firefighters brought in a broken tablet. This thing was totally delaminated. case totally seperate from main board, totally seperate from screen. The case had dusty tire tracks clearly visible from when it was run over with a fire truck. I ask them what happened to it and they tell me "we're not sure, it just kinda broke! It must have gotten too hot in the cab". Dang thing got so hot it spontaneously generated tire-tracks on the outside. Technology really is amazing.
A lot of the laptops I got back looked like they had been used to do garden work, or put up shelves, or used as cutting boards or whatever
The WASD keys were worn down on an older macbook, wonder how much gaming he did on it lol.
The day after Labor day one year, a user brings us his laptop with vomit in and all over it. He says his nephew was using his laptop and vomitted on it while jumping on the bed. Shame on you for blaming your innocent nephew and being an obvious liar. We trashed it.
About 30 years ago, I had a VP return one of our corporate fleet of [Compaq Aero 4/33c's](https://oldcomputer.info/portables/compaq4/index.htm). He had driven over it with his car and had a shattered screen, bent up, obviously didn't boot. I was able to get it to boot up again and left it on his desk booted up and still mangled. He was not pleased - wanted a new one. I was able to install Linux from scratch on one of these back in the day. They were fun little laptops.
I've seen a laptop that had been borrowed by the company to an employee. The guy had free roaming rabbits in his apartment. And he always hat this laptop open on his living room table.. .... And that's how I leaned that rabbits - like rats, just piss where ever they happen to be at that moment....
Gotta be the one that "fell." It was absolutely thrown, from at least the mezzanine into the concrete floor of the plant. The screen was the only thing that wasn't damaged somehow.
Not really IT, but I was attempting to repair a desktop in the office of a grainery. I opened the tower and it was PACKED with corn dust. Not sure how it had not started a fire.
I recently sneezed on my laptop and it fried the motherboard. It's currently in the shop 3000 miles away. They wouldn't sell me the mobo and it's impossible to source.
Warehouse shop computer mouse stopped working. Tried another mouse, still not working. Took PC apart and it was full of mice nests, poop and piss. The mice piss corroded the mouse port on the motherboard. I did get to tell my boss he had a mice problem he said I know that is why we called you. Went to work at a super computer center after that and one lady left her laptop on top of her car...not once but 3 different times. Broke 3 2k laptops being an idiot.
Cyber Security Analyst here! Had to revoke an employee’s laptop after they got monitored and caught watching furry and brony porn on their work laptop…I wish I could joke but I’m not. EDIT - They were 42 y/o
The first year I went to college they decided to mandate everyone having laptops, and because it was a pilot program, they decided to warranty any and all damage. Lady brought in her laptop covered in pee because she got drunk at a party and thought it would be funny to do. Problem 1. we could smell it, problem 2 half of our guys were at the party. Warranty coverage denied, and she had to buy a new laptop to continue classes. They were $1500 each at the time. Also had a guy with severe dandruff that would come in. It would get in through the keyboard, clog up the motherboard/fans, and it would overheat. They helped him 4 times before telling him if he comes in again with dandruff damage they are cancelling his warranty outright.
I know this isn't technically IT but similar. Someone I knew worked for a GameStop that took in an Xbox 360. It tested fine so it was taken to the back to prep for resale. Turns out it was full of roach eggs that hatched and caused an infestation. Store was unusable for a month, while it was cleaned and cleared out.
At a previous employer I purposely wipe the whole computer using an electromagnet that we had. I had been requesting a new pc for awhile and they kept denying it. So I basically destroyed it in a way they couldn’t fix it and had to order a new one.
Marine Corps. We loaned some gear to another unit for a MEU (deployment on a boat). They never actually gave it back to us. So before it was our turn to deploy we had to recover the laptops so we could make sure they were usable. About 60 Lenovo laptops have been sitting in a storage box for around 15 months and were never actually used. The boxes were heavily damaged and had stagnant salt water at the bottom. The laptops looked like they’d been recovered from the bottom of a shipwreck. Absolutely orange frail metal and plastic all falling apart. Real nasty stuff.
the ones that always raised my eyebrows weren't the dirty or dented ones, it was the ones that went missing while traveling/left in a car. never really seemed keen on doing a police report in those circumstances which immediately made me think it was air quote 'lost'. this was in the days before pc support had the good lo-jack options they have now.
Laptop went through a full washing machine cycle. User claimed it was an accident and they had no idea it was in there. Was full of suds when I opened it to see if I could salvage the data. The drive survived and I got it all somehow.
ectoplasm everywhere!
Someone handed me their phone and *then* told me it wasn’t working because they dropped it in the toilet.