This reminds me of the time I was running a plastics recycling plant and I trespassed into a room our house electrician called "the widow maker."

I started working there as an industrial controls engineer, but I eventually ended up doing a lot of jackleg (half ass?) electrical work and even the odd bit of mechanical kludging - just to keep things running until the skilled tradespeople could take over.

Our equipment all ran on three-phase 480, but the electrical supply to the building had been put in place in the 1960s when as an auto plant, it took a hell of lot more power to run everything. The power supply room was super high voltage, old, scary and dangerous.

One night, something blew, and the power to half the building went out. I drove in to try to get our production line back up, and being the hard charging out gay man with something to prove, I wasn't going for half measures.

I soon eliminated any issues with junction boxes and transformers in the plant, so I figured the problem had to be in the main supply. I promptly went in and looked around. Sure enough, a junction looked blown. I was about to try to reset it when my cellphone rang. It was our chief electrician, who started screaming at me the moment he heard where I was.

When he arrived later, he put on rubber boots and gloves and grabbed a pole tester. And made me wait outside. When he was done, he called the city electrical utility and scheduled maintenance. Told me if I'd touched that junction box wrong, my body might have exploded.

Ooops. Male privilege, ignorance, and arrogance all wrapped up in one package. I'm just glad he phoned me!