Firestorm wrote:Most electricians wire "hot." It's pretty hard to kill yourself unless you do it just right (or wrong, as the case may be).
Yes, I've seen them do it more than once. If you happen to be watching and they realize it, they will tell you they really should interrupt the power, but they're not going to.
Heck, this is "The Garage." I've got a doozie of a story about wiring it hot.
There was the time, maybe 35 years ago when my sister and her husband left me with their kids (who were about 3 and 5 at the time) so they could have a weekend away. I was happy to do it. They were in a new house and it started to rain pretty hard. The yard was part grass, part mud. It really was new. All of a sudden, the lights started to turn on and off like there was a ghost in the house. I called the electric company, and the contractor who built the house, and then I waited. I recall the front door was open with a metal storm/screen door. My nephew, the younger one was headed for the door for some reason and I pulled him back and then shut the door. After a short time, the utility company showed up and assessed the problem. They shouted to me to stay inside and not to touch anything on the exterior, like windows and I think, "uh oh." Then I see them get these ginormous rubber gloves that go up to the shoulders and boots that look like waders and tools attached to long non-conductive poles. I can't really see what's going on but it's serious. 
It turned out the rain caused the ground to give way under the conduit that brought in the electric service and the weight of it had caused it to pull away from the meter. The exterior of the house, aluminum siding, was shorted and hot, which explains the backfeed that was turning lights on and off. (Turns out I saved my nephew's life as that metal door was probably hot; it was underground service so there was no option to drop the wires from the pole first.) They made the repairs in the rain without turning off the power to the neighborhood. You could say they "wired it hot!" It was impressive, what they did. Also, because it was on their side of the meter, it was the utility company's responsibility. I'm guessing the bill for work like this would have been rather substantial.
I called my sister when they finished. No sense worrying her for nothing. We talked about that one for years.