Horror stories would make a pretty good thread.
It was ~ 1987, a contractor had a job wiring two buildings, five floors, 180 units of high end elderly retirement apartments. Their own guys were going to get sheetrocked right into the walls, so they borrowed a few of us scabs from a bigger faster contractor.
After two days we were racing down both sides of the hall putting MC into the metal studs, not carrying their bucket stools, throwing pallets of MC into the walls.
About four months in, towards the spring, I happened to look down a basement hallway and the temp light string was really dim. Had a hard time seeing 100 ft down the hall. It was under two seconds I knew the temp power had lost the neutral and if the temp lights were getting 40 volts, someone else on a power tool was getting 180.
I thought it was an interesting problem and started looking for the temp source. Walked another 80 ft through the basement, turned two corners, and came into this large space with a full circle of 12 electricians hanging out. I said "the temporary has lost the neutral". No one moved as much as a quarter of an inch. I asked, "where's the panel", couple of seconds pass, and one guy gave it up, "it's out back".
I leave and walked pretty directly to the outhouse with the temporary feed in it, opened the door, and I was alone. Put the meter on the disconnect and knew the UG feeder to the outhouse was bad coming in. Had my hand on the switch ready to pull and the foreman from the other building shows up. I explain, show the bad voltage, and during this minute the foreman from the first building shows up. I say, we have to shut it down, see a nod, and pull the switch.
As soon as I do that they start saying, "you can't do that, it will shut the job down" and I tell them, no, it's not going back on. I say, it's almost lunch, as long as we get power back by 1:00, we'll be okay (they were the only nonunion company allowed onsite). Quickly, we decide to chop the temporary and backfeed it from the normal power, which was just ready in both buildings. That works and I get in my truck and take off for a long lunch at the girl's college cafeteria. That was what they noticed, they went looking for me and couldn't find me.
Couple of days later I was talking with one of their young summer laborers, he was a 3rd or 4th year EE. He was telling me he was up on the upper floors with three electricians and they were complaining the drill was not working. He looked at it and took the metal temp outlet box, touched it to a lightbulb, then to the metal studding with the lightbulb in series, and was showing them, "hey I can light up the lightbulb". That made them take notice saying, "you can't do that" (while he was doing it).
Was a good company with good people and a reputation for doing good work, deservedly. Did not see any incompetence or cluelessness while I was there. That judgement I reserve for intentional malfeasance, intentional non feasance, intentional laziness resulting in negligence and loss, which fills my email outbox to this day.
Institutionalized waste keeps people employed (would like to quote Quigley on this but he may object, from his resting place).