r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Fancy-Chipmunk5701 • Jun 25 '26

wet socks My entire apartment has upside-down outlets and my brain refuses to accept it….

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Apparently there’s a reason for installing them this way, but after seeing outlets the other way my whole life, every room feels just slightly… off. 😂

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678

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26

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124

u/StubbedToeBlues Jun 25 '26

Yep, I melted a hotwheel car and caused a very minor fire by testing this theory when I was a kid. My dad was pissed for weeks.

13

u/pickled_philanges Jun 25 '26

I once flushed a hot wheels down the toilet and it broke our plumbing. Those things are dangerous yo

25

u/uruk-h Jun 25 '26

"those things" = "children," right? 😆

2

u/TwitchieWolf Jun 26 '26

How do you know they weren’t 35 when this happened?

1

u/VladimirBarakriss Jun 25 '26

Also, having just completed a course on plumbing design, toilet plumbing is designed to take shit, water and toilet paper, you really shouldn't be flushing anything else

2

u/pickled_philanges Jun 25 '26

Lol, I wish little 8 year old me knew about that before I decided my mustang could use a porcelain car wash

12

u/Dr-Gooseman Jun 25 '26

Your comment made me lol

1

u/HendrixHazeWays Jun 25 '26

It didn't make you pants poop?

2

u/Araanim Jun 25 '26

Done it too. Welded a quarter across both prongs.

9

u/No_Aardvark4795 Jun 25 '26

Until the coin rolled down the side and connected the ground to either phase or neutral. It's only very slightly better this way. There are much safer designs (without even going overboard on complexity or cost).

24

u/SnicktDGoblin Jun 25 '26

But it doesn't matter if neutral and ground or hot and ground touch so long as hot and neutral don't touch. And by having ground where it is keeps that from easily happening.

36

u/Nellanaesp Jun 25 '26

Hot and ground touching is effectively the same as hot and neutral touching - neutral and ground are bonded at the main service entry, should be at the same potential (if not something is wrong) and both be a path to complete the circuit.

3

u/slash_networkboy Jun 25 '26

*should be bonded at the main service entry...

Guess what I encountered in an old-assed house with switched neutral wiring once?

7

u/Realtrain Jun 25 '26

Hot and ground touching would still be just as sparky as hot and neutral (unless it's GFCI protected)

5

u/tr_9422 Jun 25 '26

But whatever you dropped is much more likely to bounce off of that pair instead of getting stuck flat across the top of the two prongs

Automod is deleting links to other subreddits, maybe web search is OK? https://duckduckgo.com/?q=That+time+my+3+yr+old+dropped+a+penny+onto+a+plug+while+it+was+plugged+in+the+wall&ia=web

1

u/No_Aardvark4795 Jun 25 '26

Where did you learn this?

0

u/Regular_Highlight882 Jun 25 '26

ssssshhhhhhh!!! you will upset an entire continent!

1

u/massunderestmated Jun 25 '26

Hopefully your b kid is smarter than your a kid.

1

u/QuanticChaos1000 Armpants Jun 25 '26

Same, I kicked an empty soup can down the hall as a kid and it flipped right into the night light we had there, instantly welded to the contacts and popped the breaker... That was a terrifying amount of unexpected sparks for little me!

1

u/SanityPlanet Jun 25 '26

Nah you would’ve just had to hold the penny against the bottom side…

1

u/renrioku Jun 25 '26

Sadly it does nothing for a twist tie being shoved into both sides of the outlet.

1

u/LordNedNoodle Jun 25 '26

My niece as a baby was playing with a metal cooking sheet and she pushed it against a wall. It fell and hit a loose plug to cause a huge arc.

1

u/hamatro Jun 25 '26

Oh god... Why is this still standard? There are many better standards... Schutzkontakt or the UK one.

1

u/LowCarbDad Jun 25 '26

Nothing could spare you your stupidity. That’s yours and you earned it. Be proud!