Tom Horne wrote:

I have a client who's entire kitchen was energized to 120 volts for
over a decade. The family kept attributing the minor shocks to static
discharge. The three wire feeder that supplied the kitchen panel had
been extended years before from a circuit that had formerly supplied a
kiln. In the process of extending the circuit it had been cross
connected so that the hot and the neutral were reversed. All of the
three wire appliances in that kitchen were energized on their case.
Nobody died and nobody got seriously shocked. I told the women who
was the kitchens primary user that if she could figure out how to
bottle whatever she was using for luck she could become fabulously
wealthy. If that circuit had been properly upgraded to four wire when
the the kitchen was remodeled that family would have never been
exposed to a possible tragedy. So in a sense you are correct that
varying from the code does not always cause injury or death but most
of us who make a living from installing electrical work find just the
possibility of injury and death unacceptable.

There you are. A kitchen wired wrong for a dozen years.

Nobody died. Nobody injured. The house didn't burn down. Hundreds of dollars
saved during the initial remodel which grew to thousands in a decade.

Sometimes good enough is, well, better.

But sometimes not.