When you forget to bring the mains cable.
Well, granted, it’s not so much “Lab”, but definitely a lot of “fuckery” here.
I’ve been on a field job with my soldering station, leaving the mains cable at home.
Well done idiot!
So I quickly opened the soldering station, stuck and taped two wires into the blade connectors from the mains input socket and threaded them out of the case.
Then I opened one of the many extension cords that were lying around and I “rewired” the lines to the station. In my defense, I used proper cable connectors – at least outside of the case.
The cable strap fixes the power cord to the case, so I don’t accidentally rip the whole shebang out of the case, exposing the wires, potentially with the open wires touching each other.