If you can do dis, U 2 can be a lectrishun

[ICanFixIt]

I was once in a telecom co-locate room in the basement of the World Trade Center where it looked even worse than that. They weren't wires. They were fiber-optic lines that each had hundreds of thousands of connections each. You had to be careful where you stepped to avoid crimping someone's fiber. There were dozens of telecom companies that had equipment in that room and it was difficult to figure out which ones were ours, and impossible to know who the rest of them belonged to. All of the yellow tangle of fiber looked like a huge bowl of spaghetti. Just one of the many reasons I am grateful to be retired.

 

[Snattlerake]

I was once in a telecom co-locate room in the basement of the World Trade Center where it looked even worse than that. They weren't wires. They were fiber-optic lines that each had hundreds of thousands of connections each. You had to be careful where you stepped to avoid crimping someone's fiber. There were dozens of telecom companies that had equipment in that room and it was difficult to figure out which ones were ours, and impossible to know who the rest of them belonged to. All of the yellow tangle of fiber looked like a huge bowl of spaghetti. Just one of the many reasons I am grateful to be retired.

It was like that on the floor of the old Southwestern Bell Central Offices all over the state. It was incredible the trash and amount of wire on the floor that was still in use. As you said you had to be careful where you put your foot to keep from disconnecting something.

 

[dennishoddy]

I wish I had pics of the wax string laced and groomed cable bundles in our power plant. The IT and phone cabling guys area was a bundle of trash and wires running everywhere. How they figured out that mess I never knew.
The control system wires came into the logic room in cable trays, organized by location and dropped into the cabinets groomed and laced. If a wire was on the outside left of a 100 wire bundle that was 6" in diameter, that wire would be in the same position at the end of the run 200' away until it was terminated. Laced all the way with wax string. Lost art in today's world when zip ties that rip your skin apart are in vogue.
Control system wires always separate from power system wiring to prevent bleed over which can really mess with today's technology.