April 6, 2026 at 3:22 pm

Employee Spent Hours Setting Up A Brand New Laptop For His Coworker, But Minutes After He Handed It Over, The Coworker Spilled Coffee

by Heide Lazaro

Coffee spill near a laptop on the desk

Freepik/Reddit

Employees tend to get excited about using new office equipment.

The following story involves an employee who set up a new laptop for a coworker.

He spent hours imaging it, copying files, and configuring the profile.

But not even 10 minutes after he left it with his coworker, disaster struck right in the middle of the keyboard.

Let’s take a closer look!

User spills coffee on new laptop less than 10 minutes after receiving it.

We are testing a new laptop here at my company.

We selected a few users to test this new machine to let us know how they get on with it.

It has a 7th Gen processor and that also means they get to test Windows 10.

This employee took the laptop out of the box and started setting it up.

I imaged the laptop out of the box and copied the user’s files.

I configured the appearance of the user’s profile as the GPO testing is still underway for that stuff.

I probably spent around 2 hours with the laptop.

It was a very nice Dell 5468.

He gave it to the user and left him with it.

I presented the laptop to the new user and he was keen to just get on with it and refused much help.

I said, “Ok, come to me if you need anything.”

I sat at my desk and read two emails.

I noticed him spring out of his seat.

The user spilled coffee on the keyboard, and he tried to fix it.

I wandered back over to his desk to see coffee spilled on the center of the keyboard.

I managed to shut it down using the trackpad and dried it with paper towels.

I opened it up to see the bottom of the motherboard wet.

Coffee was dripping out of the keyboard. I disconnected the battery.

We are going to leave this until Friday to see if it comes back to life.

Let’s find out what others have to say about this on Reddit.

This user shares their personal thoughts.

Screenshot 2026 02 24 at 8.08.14 PM Employee Spent Hours Setting Up A Brand New Laptop For His Coworker, But Minutes After He Handed It Over, The Coworker Spilled Coffee

Lol. Here’s a funny response.

Screenshot 2026 02 24 at 8.08.46 PM Employee Spent Hours Setting Up A Brand New Laptop For His Coworker, But Minutes After He Handed It Over, The Coworker Spilled Coffee

This comment makes sense.

Screenshot 2026 02 24 at 8.09.00 PM Employee Spent Hours Setting Up A Brand New Laptop For His Coworker, But Minutes After He Handed It Over, The Coworker Spilled Coffee

Yes, indeed!

Screenshot 2026 02 24 at 8.09.18 PM Employee Spent Hours Setting Up A Brand New Laptop For His Coworker, But Minutes After He Handed It Over, The Coworker Spilled Coffee

Finally, it works itself out, says this person.

2026 03 25 at 4.27.02 PM Employee Spent Hours Setting Up A Brand New Laptop For His Coworker, But Minutes After He Handed It Over, The Coworker Spilled Coffee

Sometimes, the real stress test is a cup of coffee.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.