Who pays if my personal laptop is broken at work?

What the numbers show

Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count

• The most recent one is from October 2026.
• This comes up 26.1× more often in r/sysadmin than across the site as a whole.

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

1. 1
   Using personal funds to buy a replacement or fix the device
2. 2
   Switching entirely to paper, pen, and textbook teaching
3. 3
   Keeping personal devices locked in a backpack, cabinet, or closet
4. 4
   Leaving personal devices at home and refusing to bring them to work
5. 5
   Bill replacement hardware to the employee's specific department rather than the IT budget.
6. 6
   Issue the oldest, slowest available loaner devices or desktops to users who break their equipment.
7. 7
   Purchase multi-year accidental damage warranties upfront for all new devices.
8. 8
   Keep a log of all replacement expenses to justify high IT hardware spending to upper management.
9. 9
   Involve HR to handle cases of repeated negligence or intentional destruction.

In their words

Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.