How dumb was this?

[Handgunner45]

Several years back, when I was still working as an electrician, I received a call from a regular customer reporting a problem with the outlets in their living room. We had done quite a bit of work on this house in the 3+ years that these people had lived there, including putting extra outlets outside for the Clark Griswald lights. When I arrived the lady of the house informed me that half of the outlets in the living room didn't work. She then informed me that it was the bottom socket on every outlet in the living room that didn't work. "they used to work, but just quit the other day". I plugged in a couple of table lamps to the non working outlets and walked to the front door and turned on the middle of the 3 switches there, and lo and behold, the lamps lit up. They had used the outlets for 3+ years never knowing that a switch controlled them. Somebody must have finally flipped the switch. Switched outlets were very common in the mid 70's to late 80's when they would put them in for table lamps instead of putting a ceiling light in the room.

[coker737]

Reminds me of the joke of the person contacting dell Comuters about why his computer wouldn't work. "OK press the start button" What start button? Here's yer sign...............

[Hey Mikey!]

Don't you just love spending the night at other peoples house? Why can't it be the same as yours. The best is when you go to take a shower and you never know how the hot water works and..you know what happens next.

[TheDreamer]

Years ago...my parents moved into a new house...found an outlet in the master bedroom that didn't work. So, they called the builder to fix it. The guy came over and poked around for while...couldn't figure out why the outlet wasn't working....

I come in and he's trying to explain to me what he's doing, etc. So, I go over the flip the switch.

I was like 6.

Years later, my parents moved to another new house. flip the switch for the garbage disposal....nothing. So, they call somebody in...he fiddles around, sees there's a magnetic switch on the garbage disposal...he pulls to see what's up...shorting it makes it work...holding it up near the top of the disposal works...but in the position where its supposed to be....doesn't work.

Says its probably defective, doesn't know why....doesn't have a new one in his truck...so he'll have to order one.

I turn the disposal stopper over...it jumps to life.

Later we notice that there's writing on the different sides of the stopper....that explains which way to put the stopper in to make disposal run.

I was still in middle school...not a rocket scientist yet.

Meanwhile, I've lived in a few places where the rooms didn't have any light fixtures in them....the only switch in the room controlled an outlet somewhere. I miss that.... though one of the places, had no light fixture in the bedroom, but two switches by the door. But, only one switched outlet that I found. Hmm....

The Dreamer.

[dmstangu]

Could one of those "toilets" have actually been a bidet? Or maybe a previous owner replaced a bidet with a toilet, not understanding the difference.

No, neither toilet was a bidet. They were positioned directly face to face.......should a person be sitting on each toilet, knees would have touched or been closed to doing so. Although house was nice, a starter home and unlikely to have had a bidet..what was know was a family of 6 built the house....no explanation given regarding odd bathroom!!!!

elg5cats

Maybe they had siamese twins, joined at the heads...

[elg5cats]

Could one of those "toilets" have actually been a bidet? Or maybe a previous owner replaced a bidet with a toilet, not understanding the difference.

No, neither toilet was a bidet. They were positioned directly face to face.......should a person be sitting on each toilet, knees would have touched or been closed to doing so. Although house was nice, a starter home and unlikely to have had a bidet..what was know was a family of 6 built the house....no explanation given regarding odd bathroom!!!!

elg5cats

Maybe they had siamese twins, joined at the heads...

Maybe, but why they put the two facing toilets in such a small cramped in space and a standard door to the bathroom, might be why they moved..........the Siamese Twins could no longer get into the space to use the toilet!!!!!
Too bad my friends worked through the realtor and never met the owner.........I'm sure they would have got the scoop on the face to face toilets.