That's what I was thinking. I could not see any way it could avoid it. This house just has a number of things wrong, electrically. I've not seen anything majorly dangerous. But 6 foot rule is marginally violated in about 4 places. That short wall, and another wall in a bedroom, lack outlets. There's also a wall in the laundry room which lacks any outlets, though it has a funny shape to make a storage area, like this:
__ __
[______]
where the opening faces into the room. But there is no door nor framework to put one in. The narrow areas on the two sides have shelves. But there is no outlet anywhere except the other side of the room (the expected ones for laundry equipment, a GFCI one next to the laundry sink, and another one in the other corner. We put a garden seeding shelf in that funny storage space (a big metro shelf just fits), but lacked an outlet to power its lights. Luckily, the wall switch next to it that switched the overhead light in the storage space was not a switch loop, so I added one there by using a switch/outlet duplex device.
All in all, three places where there are no outlets turn out to be in need of them. Things are just goofy in that house. I suspect no permits were pulled and no inspection happened when it was built in 2000.
