I have been sabotaged

I had been wearing my big headphones a lot lately so I decided to use some smaller, lighter headphones to listen to something last night. I plugged them into my laptop and was only getting sound out of the right ear. I figured they had gotten damaged because I had just thrown them in my duffel bag for the flight home so I grabbed a new pair* and had the exact same problem. I guess my laptop's headphone jack is busted. I know I have a USB C/headphone jack adaptor† so I search my house for it and then have the exact same problem. My mac definitely can channel sound to just the left or right speaker but somehow both external methods fail in the exact same way. I restart my computer in case it's somehow a software thing but no luck. That sucks.

This morning, I plug the new pair of headphones into my iPod to listen to while shopping and for some reason, audio is only coming out of the right ear. I finally think to grab my big headhpones from out of my bag. My iPod and laptop both work fine. It just turns out my small headhpones broke and the new-in-box pair I grabbed to replace them are broken in the exact same way. Just grabbed another new pair and they work fine (for now anyway).

* I am a long-time fan of sony's inexpensive 'street-style' headphones (over ear headphones where the headband goes behind instead of over the head). They're comfortable to wear for long periods of time, you can run in them, and they're inexpensive enough that if a pair breaks it's hardly the end of the world (so I can just throw them in a bag without worrying about them). They used to be readily available back in the CD player era and a bunch of the iPod era but even before apple ruined their phone by removing the headphone jack and people decided they wanted more their headphones to be able to run out of battery, they had started to become less ubiquitous as people decided they wanted either huge can headphones or earbuds. I had a big futureshop gift card I had gotten somewhere (credit card points?) so I decided I'd just buy a bunch of boxes of headphones at once so I'd be set for life. After like 15 years, I still have 4 (now 2) unopened pairs. Recently, I also made the switch to big can headphones but I do still use these cheap headphones regularly

† I accidentally bought it when trying to get a lighting/headphone adaptor. Thanks Apple!