Which pretty much explains why he didn’t mention it

Clueless young engineer accidentally hits the open screen of his pricey new laptop, and knocks the computer into a just-flushed toilet, reports a pilot fish who doesn't actually find all this out until much later.

"After he turned the laptop upside down and shook it vigorously, it still continued to run for a few hours," fish says.

"The next day, when it failed to boot up, he brought it to our IT workshop and insisted that it be immediately repaired, as he was scheduled to use it for a presentation in a couple of hours."

But the engineer doesn't mention how the laptop got the way it is.

The unsuspecting tech who is handed the laptop proceeds to open the unit, get the vendor on the phone, and finally send it to the manufacturer for warranty repair.

It's only when the manufacturer calls back to tell the tech that the laptop is disqualified from warranty coverage due to "bits of toilet paper in the DVD drive and significant obvious water damage to the system board, speakers and display" that fish and his cohorts call the engineer to the IT office to ask what really happened.

"After he fessed up, he still didn't seem to recognize just how bad the incident was," says fish.

"Amazing -- the company had to fork over almost as much to repair the unit as it originally cost to acquire. Sure would be nice to have a 'payroll deduction plan' to cover something like this."

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