Comms rooms are not cupboards
I've seen (and probably contributed) to cabling nightmares over the years. One mess that springs to mind though was in a newly built gym. We had a lovely dedicated comms room, with two full height racks - one for the patch panels and our switching, and one for some sports governing bodies who were located in the building (they'd put their equipment in that rack and then cross patch into the patch panels in our rack as they moved around offices, etc). It wasn't the patching that was the real problem (at the time - it probably is now due to "organic" growth): it was that the facilities management guys gave a key to our comms room to the folk running the gym.
I got called in to patch in some extra sockets, and upon opening the comms room door, a load of weights rolled out, followed rapidly by an exercise crash mat falling towards me. The gym folk had mistaken "comms room" for "general storage cupboard" and filled it with spare gym equipment. I had to empty this all out into the corridor to get to the comms racks to do the patching.
After doing the job I went to the gym reception, asked if they had a key to comms room, took the one they gave me, explained that it was our comms room, not a cupboard and then told them that their spare gym equipment was neatly stacked next to it. The key came back with me and my then boss asked FM nicely to not give random building occupants keys to our comms rooms.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
