However, at one newspaper where I worked, the IT manager felt it neccessary to put up a large notice in the copy editors' area which read something like "If you must drink coffee at the desk, please take it without sugar!"
Apparently keyboards and terminals would survive the coffee, and he regularly had one or two keyboards hanging from the partitions in his workshop after being washed with a hose; the sugar is what does the damage. But I don't think any editor or publisher would dare to ban coffee for copy editors, certainly not on the late shift.
And I do know that several of those photographs from correspondents and readers which "went missing" mysteriously, were lost after being smothered in a takeaway curry.
I'm surprised how many lost items turned up in no fit state to return when I had to move everything out to have my office recarpeted. However I'm more worried by all the things I can't find since moving everything back in. I know where they used to be.
However, if you do spill something on a keyboard and decide to take the risk of washing and drying, the one thing not to do is to undo those screws underneath. At one time keyboards had little holders for the springs to fit in. Many modern ones do not, so any attempt to open them results in a spray of several hundred parts over a wide area. It's quite impressive.
I've just this minute thought that if one could loosen those screws just enough one could produce this effect at the first touch by someone else...
Anyone else remember those old DOS programs that could sit looking like the old C: prompt but when anything was typed in would bring up a message of something like "Checking hard drive -- about to go into cleaning cycle" and manage to make the built-in speaker which usually just beeped produce a passable imitation of a washing machine spin cycle?
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