For some companies getting rid of equipment, they have a requirement for the equipment not to be operational, and sometimes cutting all the cables suffices for the requirement (sometimes it's smashing the screen, instead.) And there are some surplusing operations that is just trying to do volume and is not trying to resell with testing/research/knowledge of what it's worth, so they're basically trying to get as many pallets of the stuff out the door in a day as possible, and this means that cords that don't pull out get snipped.
In your case, imagine a salvage company gets called in to remove a rack of equipment. They can't ship the whole racks, so they remove it from the front and snip anything in back, then sell for parts as an auction. Requires no knowledge of the equipment or condition and maximizes the amount of items they can list in a day.
Rough, sometimes careless work, but there are business models where it can make sense.