Holy crap I.T. work sucks. Our lab is disconnected from the main building so they just shipped over 5x48 port preconfigured network switches and asked if I could handle the replacement. It seemed simple enough but I should have said no... what a gross job. The cabinets and wires in the lab service corridor were covered with 8 years of grime and resembled a plate of spaghetti. To top it off the cabinets were full with other research groups switches so I had to work around a ton of other f'ing wires.
Of course I probably screwed up a few connections and will be rewarded with a bunch of complaints tomorrow for my troubles.