It's confusing to me to read this -- you write like you know what you're talking about, but that can't be the case because if you knew what you were talking about you'd understand how the kind of mistake that happened can happen.

As Matthew said on Twitter, this isn't the kind of mistake that happens twice. But for those of us who do operational work, it's easy to see how this happens once. Bit rot in a cab, work orders from someone who didn't know about the legacy patch panel or assumed too much in their instructions and a catastrophe. From now on, photos for every smart hands will probably be a part of the prep-procedure.