tms wrote:
Hey Jamie,
Sounds like a polarity problem to me. In older houses and on most older appliances, both prongs of the plug and holes in the socket are the same; they don't have a grounding lug and they don't distinguish between line power (black, red or blue) and neutral (white). So when you plug one of these older items into an older socket, and turn it on, you can actually power up the nearest neutral, which in this case is the adjacent socket with the coffee grinder. The best solution, as Dennis suggested is to install a new receptacle and ground it properly. If it's in the kitchen, buy a Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter (GFCI) receptacle. You can even slave adjacent receptacles to one GFCI to protect other outlets in your kitchen.
Cheers,
Tom
These are all new outlets, so perhaps the outlet is faulty or something's loose. I think the first outlet in the circuit is GFCI, but I'll check to make sure. Thanks!!