Cisco stuff
Not exactly the same story but close.
Back in the 00s, in the shittiest company I've ever worked for, big one, with a big DC, we had a routine op, with a colleague: insert a 24 cat5 ports card in one of the 4 Cisco 6509 of the DC.
Easy: one lifts all cables, and the other slides the card gently in the chassis.
Except, it did NOT go as planned: as soon as the last gentle push was done, a big bang occurred and we ended up with a down whole chassis, unable to switch it back on again.
Long story short: we replaced the chassis with an old one coming from the basement, moved all cards to it (minus the one creating the whole incident) and were back in business in 2 hours.
Turned up the fried chassis died because it was (like everything else) recycled and the idiot that removed a card last time bended the male power plug of the back plane. So we shorted it when we inserted the card, frying the chassis.
I remember this email I sent to the c**t who was serving as CIO that day, who was suggesting to make sure it didn't re-occur (what a fecking good idea, CIO !), basically telling him + world "yes, good idea. We should stop re-using old kit and procure for new one, since this was the root cause.". Did not get an answer, I wonder why ... Didn't get funding for DC kit either ...