Sump pump electrical supply

This question applies to an existing home, I just wondered how normal it is. The house is not entirely typical, there are some commercial-type systems in it, such as the sump pumps. My question is about the electrical supply to two of the pumps.

There is a hard-wired sump pump at one end of the long house. At the other end, there are two pumps for one pit. They are plugged in to a double outlet. The sump pump floats act as switches to the outlets. So, the outlets are not always supplying power. Each one turns on when the float rises, and in turn the pump turns on. So, kind of like a wall switch for an outlet, but the switch is activated by the float, not your hand.

Only one pump and outlet comes on at a time, they alternate.

We discovered this when we needed to plug a power tool into one of the outlets, and could not figure out for the longest time why it didn’t work, yet we could make the sump pump work by, yes, pulling up on the float.

Is this a typical way to supply power to a sump pump?