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One of the fast food chains (I won't name) put in all new registers. The specs said they needed twist lock plugs on all of them but the stores were not wired with twist lock receptacles and they were not shipped with twist lock plugs so this is what they did.
After a few installs they stopped.
I found this in my junk drawer yesterday

Greg:
Hmmm. is that a Straight blade male to a TL female....amd a TL male to a straight blade female....that just happen to 'match up'.....or is that a real true story???

It is absolutely true. The two pieces were put in the toolbox to deal with the problems when you had a mismatch in an install so you could get them up and running. Somebody decided if you NEEDED a twistlock to fulfill the installation specs you could assemble this and have one (with NEMA 5-15s on both ends). Fortunately it was stopped right away but a few stores got this cludge in their installation package (where I got these).

BTW after all the hoopla, virtually all of them were installed without twist locks because many people pointed out the machine end was the regular IEC C13/C14 so what were they "locking"? They never rewired the stores for the dedicated circuits in the recommendation/spec either.
They just plugged everything straight into the existing circuits and it worked fine. The big problems were software related.

I'm sensing the title of the thread means more than it appears

BTW... LMAO!

Let me guess, it was made up by the IT guys? I know that they have gender changers for most everything else.

Point of Sale installation support team but that was sort of "IT guys".

It is just what happens when you have a parts catalog and a hard to enforce rule. People get creative with the bosses money. These probably cost them $50 a pair by the time they got them in the box with parts and labor. I don't know how they were made but they are not even the same cord type. You can see the one with the female end fell apart in my garage.

A relative of mine showed me an "adaptor" that he got from the factory he worked at years back. It had a standard NEMA 5-15 plug on one end, and on the other end had a NEMA 6-15 connector on it. 6" long cord too. I didn't know what they could have used that for. It looked like one of the plant electricians put it together.

Greg:
At $50 a pair, that's still about half the cost of the Hubbell 'gender benders'; ie: L5-20 male to 5-20R at $125.90 from WWG.

Hope to purchasing dept don't see this thread!

Sort of related: I did some work in a factory that had alot of sewing machines. When there was a problem with one, they would just un-plug it and plug in a replacement. Problem is these are three phase machines, and not all wired the same. Plant maint. department solution: plugs made up with two of the phases swapped so as to reverse rotation, machine running backwards, just plug in a reversing plug and keep on sewing.

IBM had so much trouble getting the phasing right in computer rooms the machines started coming with phase rotation detection and a reversing plug right in the power supply. Red light on and no power, pull the reversing plug out, flip it over and plug it in.
Prior to that somebody was moving a couple wires.

Since when do computer power supplies care about phasing? Typically when I see machines big enough to require "three phase power", all that means is they send each phase to a separate power supply module which connects between it and ground.

Maybe the stuff you describe was more exotic.

I found the same with our old 3-phase computers, just sending each phase to a separate power supply module. I have not looked that close at our newest IBM stuff, but I suspect the same at worst.

We had lots of 3 phase motors in the old stuff. (before everything was basically a PC). Even the gate blowers were 3 phase. It helped balance the load. Some power supplies were 3 phase, some just tapped off 2 phases and were basically single phase. Those there the ones you had to be careful with on red leg delta.