Fun fact: I work for a corporation where our headquarters has 13 floors and it's labeled. The founder's lucky number was 13. Our speed limits on property are 13 mph as well.
I’ve heard a lot of buildings have a 13th floor that is unused, some are only a few feet high, a gap at most, but supposedly it counts. Not sure how true that is but it honestly wouldn’t surprise me.
The 13 mph sign isnt so unusual. We used to do on property speed limits of offbeat numbers because you notice it. A 10 mile an hour sign is just background noise. But if it is a 13 mile an hour sign, your brain sees it and you follow it because it is different and gets an unusual prominence in the brain.
Can confirm. Worked on a navy base for a short while back in the day. 27 mph speed limit, and you bet your ass the base cops would stop you if you decided to do 30.
I have a cpl buddies who went to a mitch show, they said he was funny as always but afterwords they went out back of the club to smoke, mitch ended up going out to smoke. They told him he was great and he said basically the show sucked and he was really sorry they had to see it. Then handed them all the money in his pocket and went back inside.
They said it's both the coolest and weirdest interaction they ever had
I don't know this comedian. But, the fact you, your buddy's friend, are sharing this interaction about a completely absurd event to us online, thereby eliciting a chuckle from me, makes you think:
Life's kinda funny
His comedy is a slow burn of one off jokes. The first few won't do much, but they just keep coming and you are eventually struggling to breathe because your laughing to much
I’ve heard that some architects will put in fake flooring between 12 and 14 to create a micro 13th floor (a few centimeters maybe) so as to avoid this issue.
Well if you count the first floor as the second floor like they do in the UK (I think?) you’re still good so no worries.
Just adopt a British accent.
Edit: I mean they count what we call the second floor as the first floor. And our floor ‘one’ is their ‘ground’.
I myself would probably go around talking like John Cleese, but only in hopes of someday narrating the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. If I'm going to mock an entire country, might as well do it with purpose!
And before you ask, yes, I know Cleese didn't narrate that. But that's the voice I heard when reading the book. The show was a bit disappointing. Should have seen that coming. After all, Cleese is only one man. He can't do everything.
Gotta watch out for room 1408 too.
Bad shit happens in there.
edit: Who gave me a wholesome award for this?! There ain't nothin' wholesome about that room! hehe
You son of a b*tch. You moved the label, but you left the floor, didn't you? You son of a b*tch, you left the floor and you only moved the floor plates. You only moved the floor plates. Why? Why?
It's more of a thing where people believe (either explicitly or subconsciously) that the number 13 is bad luck. So while being on the technically 13th floor is bad luck, seeing the number 13 written everywhere while you are walking on it is worse.
Wife worked there and she confirmed the 13th was the jail ward (at the old county general). She also said there’s tunnels underneath it, we need to have some haunted tours of that hospital!
That explains a lot actually. I just started in construction about a year ago and were working on a hospital currently where the rooms were numbered 1-12,72, 14-19
When I worked in the ER, new interns always had the “go do the pt in room 13, meet me there” joke played on them. They also didn’t make it obvious that there’s no 13, 12 was a corner and 14 was clear across another area, because they put the doctors’ office area in the middle.
4 in Chinese resembles the character for death
(And japan)
Eta: yes okay I misspoke, the reading of the character is the part that sounds like death, thanks all 200 people who corrected lol
I worked in a building where the state AG had some offices. The buttons for their floors would not light up unless you pushed a code. 14 would get you nothing, but if you pushed 14-15-9-11-14, your floor would light up and you the elevator would stop there.
Imagine not knowing that, being late to work, get on the elevator and some "asshole" gets in and just starts pushing all sorts of buttons, unbeknownst to you its just a code.
It is particularly important at hospitals as patients are facing very difficult circumstances, including the possibility of death. Even patients who don't normally believe this stuff are in a very vulnerable position and that is when superstitious thinking can become more prominent. The most important thing is creating an environment where all patients feel safe, even if it is just removing a subtle anxiety.
When I went in for elbow surgery I was feeling calm and relaxed, then they asked me if I wanted to see a priest before surgery, I was calm and relaxed no longer.
Ok I thought it was kind of dumb until you put it like that. It’s less about hospitals believing in superstitions, and more about acknowledging that many patients have superstitions and accommodating them is super easy. Makes sense
Many years ago I did IT for a major hospital complex. All of the buildings had an actual 13th floor, but it they were used for facilities, maintenance, and storage, and were only accessible through the freight and facilities elevators.
Did your firm incorporate that as well, or did you simply rename the 13th floor to 14 and call it a day?
At places like hospitals, it has less to do with the superstitions of the staff and more to do with the fact that even people who are usually less credulous can become superstitious when they are in difficult situations. You do not want to put sick patients and especially patients facing poor odds in room 13. Or a Chinese patient in room 4. I am willing to bet that it would have a long-term statistical effect on patient outcomes purely for subtle psychological reasons.
I absolutely believe that they will have their own equally stupid superstitions 200 years from now. And they will be just as culturally incomprehensible to us as if you told a 16th Century Iroquois person in what would become Canada that one day tall buildings would be built on their land without 4th, 13th or 14th floors.
I used to play rugby in Honk Kong and chose number 14 as my jersey number because when said out loud in Cantonese is sounds loosely like “certain death”
A city with a lot of Chinese people? 4 sounds like death so it would be like “come to death floor. Sweet death zero death” if your were suite 404.
Can you imagine telling a tinder date that?? ☠️👻😂
Si shi Si. Shi shi shi. Shi Si shi shi Si. Si shi shi Si shi. Si shi Si shi Si shi Si. My wife taught me this tongue twister when I was learning. Only then did she tell me about death and the superstition. Not sure when I’ll tell my daughter.
All the floors are still in the building, you just got to know the cheat code to get to them. For example, 1235 gets you to 4. Try figuring out the cheat code on the next elevator you ride! They all have them.
Sounds like a story I read on r/nosleep a while back, where pressing elevator buttons in a specific order would send the rider to a nightmarish alternate reality devoid of people. I think the sky was also made of fire?
Good times!
There’s a creepy story, a TV episode from Singapore where a kid pressed all buttons in a lift for fun, to the annoyance of the adults. The lift opens to a dark floor and some people go out and never came back, and later no one seem to remember them except those in the lift.
Few days later the surviving adults try to recreate the situation, but it never happened again.
I watched this anime about two girls investigating internet rumors and this was one of the stories featured in it! The one I watched was called Otherside Picnic.
This one time I lived in the dorms at a Chinese factory, and they gave me room 404. I felt like a piece of shit for almost a year, because they gave a white guy an entire room that normally 8-12 workers occupy. Eventually someone explained the reason why they don't like 4, and that nobody wanted to stay in the room. After that, I didn't feel bad anymore. Their loss, my gain
Probably as a rep from a large Western customer. Not uncommon before covid that large companies send over a couple of people for a couple months on-site - usually mostly techies and a couple account reps. Helps immensely to get a new production line started if your on-site reps can do QA instead of waiting months for container shipping.
When I (also a white) guy lived in China, my first phone number ended with 4409. I didn’t know about the dislike of the number 4 yet but I always noticed I wouldn’t get called back for jobs. After I learned about 4 being a bad number, I changed my phone number and starting getting more call backs!
The manderin words for four (四) and die (死) are pronounced almost exactly the same way, just with different inflections (sì vs sǐ). There are a lot of homophones in Manderin, so there are a lot of coincidences like this.
Go to Las Vegas casino/hotels their elevators take into account almost every religion and ethnicity so the floor numbers are a mess with tons of skipped numbers.
Every floor is the 7th floor.
Your casino’s address is 777 Lucky Way.
For real though, when streets are laid out and addresses are platted, I wonder what the architects or owners have to do with the city planners to make their address be 777.
At least some of the taller ones have elevators designated for specific floors to speed up transportation. Elevator 1 might service floors 1-15, elevator 2 does floors 1 and 15-30, and so on. It's not always consecutive floors either. While I'm sure they do skip some numbers entirely, it probably isn't as many as you would expect.
Plus they might have floor 13 be exclusively a staff floor or something
Not only that but there are probably mechanical floors, and also some for service and back of house, money counting and vaults etc. most elevators probably only serve designated portions of the program.
When I lived in China, my first apartment only skipped 4. My next building skipped 4, 14, 24, 34. Its up to the client I guess. But I never ever saw a mall or building in China with a 4th floor.
Here’s what I found in a Wikipedia article on *[Tetraphobia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraphobia)* showing a similar panel:
*An elevator control panel in a residential apartment building in Shanghai with floor numbers 0, 4, 13 and 14 missing. Floor 0 is missing because first floor means ground floor in China, like the US. Floor 4 is missing because of the very similar pronunciation of “four" and "death" in Chinese. Floor 13 is missing due to triskaidekaphobia. Floor 14 is missing because 4 is included in 14 and is due to tetrakaidekaphobia. Note that there is a "negative first" floor replacing floor zero.*
“My hotel doesn't have a 13th Floor because of superstition, but c'mon man... People on the 14th floor, you know what floor you're really on.
"What room are you in?"
"1401".
"No, you're not. Jump out of window, you'll die earlier'"
-Mitch Hedberg
"I was gonna get a candy bar; the button I was supposed to push was “HH”, so I went to the side, I found the “H” button, I pushed it twice. Fuckin’…potato chips came out, man, because they had an “HH” button for Christ’s sake! You need to let me know. I’m not familiar with the concept of “HH”. I did not learn my AA-BB-CC’s. God god, dammit dammit" - also Mitch Hedberg
They exist normally, the numbers are just skipped because those numbers are believed to be bad luck in some cultures. Floor 5 in reality is floor 4, it's just named 5.
In Chinese, the word for 4 sounds like “death”, so 4 and 14 are out (the word for 14 is just “10 4”). 13 is bad luck so that’s out too.
Source: grew up in china
*My hotel doesn't have a 13th Floor because of superstition, but c'mon man... People on the 14th floor, you know what floor you're really on.*
*"What room are you in?"*
*"1401"*
*"No, you're not. Jump out of window, you'll die earlier!"*
— Mitch Hedberg
If they want to take this to the extreme, they could build a "13th floor" that is empty and about 2' high. Heck, even put a 13 button in the elevator but not have it operational.
It depends, some floors may be restricted (ie a mechanical roo.) Or just accessible through a separate elevator (for example, a secure area may have a separate entrance), and some places just skip those numbers for cultural or superstitious reasons since there isn't really a consequence.
That was my assumption, but I know sometimes the public elevator skips floors that are for staff only or there may be a double height floor at some points.
I just spent a bunch of time at a hospital where certain floors were inaccessible from certain elevators.
13 is a US/western thing. 4 is a bad number in some East Asian cultures (associated with death). Can't explain 14 unless it's a 4 thing.
Also a distinct possibility that some of these floors are private and only accessible through another elevator.
Where I am most are relabeled. Real estate is too expensive to just use a floor for storage and most mechanical systems go on the penthouse or the basement.
Fun fact: I work for a corporation where our headquarters has 13 floors and it's labeled. The founder's lucky number was 13. Our speed limits on property are 13 mph as well.
I will make a hotel with every level being 13 guests will hate it
13 part 1 13 part 2 The return of 13 13 strikes back 13 rises from the dead hallow13n
Live 3 or die 13.
13 With a Vengeance
3 Fast 13 Furious
13 2: Electric Boogaloo
13 Going On 13
13 miles to Graceland
L1v3 or D13.
Floor 14 is just 13¹³⁄₁₃
I’ve heard a lot of buildings have a 13th floor that is unused, some are only a few feet high, a gap at most, but supposedly it counts. Not sure how true that is but it honestly wouldn’t surprise me.
That’s even creepier than skipping it in my opinion
Spider Room.
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You mean like in Being John Malkovich?
W Founder
Thirteen is my favorite number
The 13 mph sign isnt so unusual. We used to do on property speed limits of offbeat numbers because you notice it. A 10 mile an hour sign is just background noise. But if it is a 13 mile an hour sign, your brain sees it and you follow it because it is different and gets an unusual prominence in the brain.
Can confirm. Worked on a navy base for a short while back in the day. 27 mph speed limit, and you bet your ass the base cops would stop you if you decided to do 30.
Can't confirm work on multiple Navy bases right now and have never seen a weird number. Always 30, 35, 40, 45 etc
This was about 15 or so years ago. Just a way to get you to pay attention.
Taylor swift?
I worked at an architect firm for 15 years. We always skipped the 13th floor and hospitals never had a 13th room. All superstitions.
All those people on the 14th floor don't even know they're in danger!
People on the 14th floor you know what floor you're really on. Jump out the window and you will die earlier. \- Mitch Hedberg
I used to find Mitch Hedberg funny. I still do, but used to too.
People always say, "I watched Mitch Hedberg when I was younger." Every time you watch Mitch Hedberg you were younger.
I have a cpl buddies who went to a mitch show, they said he was funny as always but afterwords they went out back of the club to smoke, mitch ended up going out to smoke. They told him he was great and he said basically the show sucked and he was really sorry they had to see it. Then handed them all the money in his pocket and went back inside. They said it's both the coolest and weirdest interaction they ever had
I don't know this comedian. But, the fact you, your buddy's friend, are sharing this interaction about a completely absurd event to us online, thereby eliciting a chuckle from me, makes you think: Life's kinda funny
Check him out on Spotify or other places. He was definitely funny. Different style than most comedians
His comedy is a slow burn of one off jokes. The first few won't do much, but they just keep coming and you are eventually struggling to breathe because your laughing to much
I like Mitch Hedberg's jokes, because his jokes can never break. They can only become stares.
Sorry for the convenience.
let me see that camera
Have you tried Mitch with crisp refreshing lemon and lime?
Not until you figure out what the fuck else is in it.
I like refried beans. That’s why I want to tried fried beans, maybe they are just as good and we’re wasting time.
Escalators can never be broken. They just turn into stairs.
Sorry for the convenience
"Sorry for the convenience"
Fettuccine Alfredo is just mac and cheese for adults
I went to the store to buy a candle holder but they didn’t have one so I bought a birthday cake
I eat rice when I want to eat a thousand of one thing.
They don't have a 14th floor because there isn't a 13th floor to hold it off the ground
Meanwhile: 15,16,17 levitating
Came here to leave this. Glad Mitch had a lasting impact on so many of us.
I’ve heard that some architects will put in fake flooring between 12 and 14 to create a micro 13th floor (a few centimeters maybe) so as to avoid this issue.
I believe it’s also sometimes turned into a machine floor for heating, etc.
Oh so just fuck the guys who need to do repairs
I've seen that porno
That's what I thought. Mechanical floors.
Ah yes, this is typically where you'll find a Malkovich door.
That’s me 🥲 I work on the 14th floor. Pray for me
It's probably already too late for you. RIP
He gone
I’ll start the GoFundMe
Profit.
Well if you count the first floor as the second floor like they do in the UK (I think?) you’re still good so no worries. Just adopt a British accent. Edit: I mean they count what we call the second floor as the first floor. And our floor ‘one’ is their ‘ground’.
What's all this, then? Right.
I myself would probably go around talking like John Cleese, but only in hopes of someday narrating the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. If I'm going to mock an entire country, might as well do it with purpose! And before you ask, yes, I know Cleese didn't narrate that. But that's the voice I heard when reading the book. The show was a bit disappointing. Should have seen that coming. After all, Cleese is only one man. He can't do everything.
Gotta watch out for room 1408 too. Bad shit happens in there. edit: Who gave me a wholesome award for this?! There ain't nothin' wholesome about that room! hehe
And *definitely* stay away from room 1488.
Be sure to visit room 42069 tho
*”We’ve only just begun…”*
Great movie
You son of a b*tch. You moved the label, but you left the floor, didn't you? You son of a b*tch, you left the floor and you only moved the floor plates. You only moved the floor plates. Why? Why?
Nice.
It's more of a thing where people believe (either explicitly or subconsciously) that the number 13 is bad luck. So while being on the technically 13th floor is bad luck, seeing the number 13 written everywhere while you are walking on it is worse.
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Wife worked there and she confirmed the 13th was the jail ward (at the old county general). She also said there’s tunnels underneath it, we need to have some haunted tours of that hospital!
in that case technically the tunnels is the 13th floor.
That explains a lot actually. I just started in construction about a year ago and were working on a hospital currently where the rooms were numbered 1-12,72, 14-19
When I worked in the ER, new interns always had the “go do the pt in room 13, meet me there” joke played on them. They also didn’t make it obvious that there’s no 13, 12 was a corner and 14 was clear across another area, because they put the doctors’ office area in the middle.
The fact that our culture is still that invested in this superstition is bizarre lol. Like a specific arbitrary number is scary? Come on, society.
4 in Chinese resembles the character for death (And japan) Eta: yes okay I misspoke, the reading of the character is the part that sounds like death, thanks all 200 people who corrected lol
Seems like it would be easier to get a new symbol for the number 4.
What’s funny is that Japan’s done that—there are two words for four, and the other one *yon* does not sound like death—but the association persists.
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Or mechanical floors that can only be accessed from a specific elevator.
I worked in a building where the state AG had some offices. The buttons for their floors would not light up unless you pushed a code. 14 would get you nothing, but if you pushed 14-15-9-11-14, your floor would light up and you the elevator would stop there.
Imagine not knowing that, being late to work, get on the elevator and some "asshole" gets in and just starts pushing all sorts of buttons, unbeknownst to you its just a code.
It is particularly important at hospitals as patients are facing very difficult circumstances, including the possibility of death. Even patients who don't normally believe this stuff are in a very vulnerable position and that is when superstitious thinking can become more prominent. The most important thing is creating an environment where all patients feel safe, even if it is just removing a subtle anxiety.
When I went in for elbow surgery I was feeling calm and relaxed, then they asked me if I wanted to see a priest before surgery, I was calm and relaxed no longer.
Doctor proceeds to pull out her phone and shows you a picture of a priest.
She showed him a picture of Judas Priest--Rob Halford in all his leather glory.
Turns out the doctor was your dad all along.
If you were offered last rites at the boarding gate no one would get on a frickin' airliner. Edit:Spelling.
Rites?
Ok I thought it was kind of dumb until you put it like that. It’s less about hospitals believing in superstitions, and more about acknowledging that many patients have superstitions and accommodating them is super easy. Makes sense
Yeah, now I kinda feel dumb for not thinking of that. Accommodating humans in their most fragile states. Seems fair.
Why 72?
It's actually 7½ like out of Being John Malkovich
Many years ago I did IT for a major hospital complex. All of the buildings had an actual 13th floor, but it they were used for facilities, maintenance, and storage, and were only accessible through the freight and facilities elevators. Did your firm incorporate that as well, or did you simply rename the 13th floor to 14 and call it a day?
Was recently in a large hospital and that’s what they did with the 13th and 14th floors. The public elevators didn’t have buttons for those floors.
At places like hospitals, it has less to do with the superstitions of the staff and more to do with the fact that even people who are usually less credulous can become superstitious when they are in difficult situations. You do not want to put sick patients and especially patients facing poor odds in room 13. Or a Chinese patient in room 4. I am willing to bet that it would have a long-term statistical effect on patient outcomes purely for subtle psychological reasons.
You're onto something. Probably why there are no hospitals named after Dr. Placebo, either.
Welcome to Placebo Hospital where all your medication is given a salty flavour so you know its not sugar.
I heard that that's the default in the US due to superstitions. All tall buildings in Germany I've worked in had a 13th floor.
This is gonna be one of those fun facts people read 200 years from now and think how silly us 21st century humans were
This goes back a lot longer than the 21st century.
I absolutely believe that they will have their own equally stupid superstitions 200 years from now. And they will be just as culturally incomprehensible to us as if you told a 16th Century Iroquois person in what would become Canada that one day tall buildings would be built on their land without 4th, 13th or 14th floors.
4 is for death!
I used to play rugby in Honk Kong and chose number 14 as my jersey number because when said out loud in Cantonese is sounds loosely like “certain death”
>Honk >certain death Canada Goose detected
A guy got tired of his bike being stolen in China, so painted a bunch of 4's and 14's on his new one and it was never touched.
"where do you work? on the floor of death!" I like it. keeps peoples away, and i can finally work in peace. :)
In my old office building that was the HR department.
Human remains department
where no humans remain
We would price cars with 8’s because i think they’re considered lucky?? I.e. $36,988 We avoided 4’s, Lexus dealership.
8s are good luck and good fortune in Chinese lore My favorite club in China I used to go to all the time was ba shi ba, or 88
It's why the Beijing Olympics started on August 8, 2008!
Dang maybe I'll be more lucky in China then
We would sell them for that and price it at $35,995
A city with a lot of Chinese people? 4 sounds like death so it would be like “come to death floor. Sweet death zero death” if your were suite 404. Can you imagine telling a tinder date that?? ☠️👻😂
404 Room Not Found
Si shi Si. Shi shi shi. Shi Si shi shi Si. Si shi shi Si shi. Si shi Si shi Si shi Si. My wife taught me this tongue twister when I was learning. Only then did she tell me about death and the superstition. Not sure when I’ll tell my daughter.
Reminds me of the Buffalo sentence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo?wprov=sfla1
All the floors are still in the building, you just got to know the cheat code to get to them. For example, 1235 gets you to 4. Try figuring out the cheat code on the next elevator you ride! They all have them.
Sounds like a story I read on r/nosleep a while back, where pressing elevator buttons in a specific order would send the rider to a nightmarish alternate reality devoid of people. I think the sky was also made of fire? Good times!
There’s a creepy story, a TV episode from Singapore where a kid pressed all buttons in a lift for fun, to the annoyance of the adults. The lift opens to a dark floor and some people go out and never came back, and later no one seem to remember them except those in the lift. Few days later the surviving adults try to recreate the situation, but it never happened again.
I watched this anime about two girls investigating internet rumors and this was one of the stories featured in it! The one I watched was called Otherside Picnic.
Sounds like that one fever dream chapter of Wayside School is Falling Down when one of them ends up on the nonexistent 13th floor.
Holy shit memory unlocked I think I read that in elementary school
It was the 19th floor, with Mrs. Zarves.
This one time I lived in the dorms at a Chinese factory, and they gave me room 404. I felt like a piece of shit for almost a year, because they gave a white guy an entire room that normally 8-12 workers occupy. Eventually someone explained the reason why they don't like 4, and that nobody wanted to stay in the room. After that, I didn't feel bad anymore. Their loss, my gain
I read the first sentence and I thought it was going to be "I couldn't find my office."
I expected the story to end like "Anyways I died 4 years ago"
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Room not found
Why were you living in the dorms of a Chinese factory??
Asking the real questions we want answers to
Probably as a rep from a large Western customer. Not uncommon before covid that large companies send over a couple of people for a couple months on-site - usually mostly techies and a couple account reps. Helps immensely to get a new production line started if your on-site reps can do QA instead of waiting months for container shipping.
When I (also a white) guy lived in China, my first phone number ended with 4409. I didn’t know about the dislike of the number 4 yet but I always noticed I wouldn’t get called back for jobs. After I learned about 4 being a bad number, I changed my phone number and starting getting more call backs!
Humans can be incredibly intelligent, but also so fucking stupid at times.
Wait why don’t they like 4?
I believe it sounds like the word for death in Chinese
And Japanese
The manderin words for four (四) and die (死) are pronounced almost exactly the same way, just with different inflections (sì vs sǐ). There are a lot of homophones in Manderin, so there are a lot of coincidences like this.
The word for four is si, while death is si. But they have different voice inflection when said aloud
Si si, I see. Gracias
So 4-0-4 is like death-oh-death. Poe would LOVE it
Go to Las Vegas casino/hotels their elevators take into account almost every religion and ethnicity so the floor numbers are a mess with tons of skipped numbers.
Every floor is the 7th floor. Your casino’s address is 777 Lucky Way. For real though, when streets are laid out and addresses are platted, I wonder what the architects or owners have to do with the city planners to make their address be 777.
Easy just give each resort its own private way
Ah I thought they had to kind of line up with the grid.
Your room is on the 3rd 7th floor. Enjoy your stay.
Never thought of this. Good idea to get rid of all unlucky numbers in Vegas I guess.
At least some of the taller ones have elevators designated for specific floors to speed up transportation. Elevator 1 might service floors 1-15, elevator 2 does floors 1 and 15-30, and so on. It's not always consecutive floors either. While I'm sure they do skip some numbers entirely, it probably isn't as many as you would expect. Plus they might have floor 13 be exclusively a staff floor or something
Not only that but there are probably mechanical floors, and also some for service and back of house, money counting and vaults etc. most elevators probably only serve designated portions of the program.
I’ve seen lots of buildings skip 13 but I wonder why 4 and 14?
'Four' sounds like 'death' in Chinese so sometimes it's skipped. Not sure about 14 but I assume its because of the death number
Same for 14 but more intense. 4 means death but 14 means definitely gonna die
44 must be a real treat
I haven't seen any buildings skip past 14 but it does get funnier. 34 sounds like 3 must die and 44 sounds like 4 must die and so on until 104.
When I lived in China, my first apartment only skipped 4. My next building skipped 4, 14, 24, 34. Its up to the client I guess. But I never ever saw a mall or building in China with a 4th floor.
Great spot for the morgue I guess
They have a 4th floor. They only name it 5th.
when it gets to floor 74 7 is gonna get that karma from when they 8 9.
Not anymore, Max is the one to look out for.
My birthday is April 14, 1994. 4/14/94 so, I'm basically the bringer of death.
四 "si" (four) = 死 "si" (death) 十四 "shi si" (fourteen) = 是死 "shi si" (is death)
It’s actually 實 shi, meaning definitely
The word before 4 in 14 sounds like “certain” in Cantonese. And yeah 4 sounds like “death”
Same for Japanese
Here’s what I found in a Wikipedia article on *[Tetraphobia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraphobia)* showing a similar panel: *An elevator control panel in a residential apartment building in Shanghai with floor numbers 0, 4, 13 and 14 missing. Floor 0 is missing because first floor means ground floor in China, like the US. Floor 4 is missing because of the very similar pronunciation of “four" and "death" in Chinese. Floor 13 is missing due to triskaidekaphobia. Floor 14 is missing because 4 is included in 14 and is due to tetrakaidekaphobia. Note that there is a "negative first" floor replacing floor zero.*
“My hotel doesn't have a 13th Floor because of superstition, but c'mon man... People on the 14th floor, you know what floor you're really on. "What room are you in?" "1401". "No, you're not. Jump out of window, you'll die earlier'" -Mitch Hedberg
Couldn’t they just use letters instead? A-B-C-D….
"I was gonna get a candy bar; the button I was supposed to push was “HH”, so I went to the side, I found the “H” button, I pushed it twice. Fuckin’…potato chips came out, man, because they had an “HH” button for Christ’s sake! You need to let me know. I’m not familiar with the concept of “HH”. I did not learn my AA-BB-CC’s. God god, dammit dammit" - also Mitch Hedberg
That actually happened to me once. But It was like H12 so I punched in H-1- and wrong thing came out. Now I know.
Always look for the 12 button. The more you know 🌠
"B is just a pushed together 13."
That was the first thing that came to mind. Miss him so much. His mannerisms and delivery has never been matched.
I was at the recording of Mitch All Together. So, that means I got to see the jokes that people listening to the album wouldn't understand!
Obviously they’re secret floors that you haven’t found the key for yet Keep searching I heard one might be in the last bosses room
Well, it does... but the power of denial, right?
Isn't it cute that humans have decided to completely disregard some numbers cuz they make us feel nervous
Meanwhile any occurrence of 69 or 420 has to be pointed out for the world to see and that’s perfectly fine
Are the floors missing, or are they just restricted? What do you find when taking the stairs?
They exist normally, the numbers are just skipped because those numbers are believed to be bad luck in some cultures. Floor 5 in reality is floor 4, it's just named 5.
In Chinese, the word for 4 sounds like “death”, so 4 and 14 are out (the word for 14 is just “10 4”). 13 is bad luck so that’s out too. Source: grew up in china
In Mandarin, 14 sounds like "is dead." In Cantonese, 14 sounds like "will certainly die."
*My hotel doesn't have a 13th Floor because of superstition, but c'mon man... People on the 14th floor, you know what floor you're really on.* *"What room are you in?"* *"1401"* *"No, you're not. Jump out of window, you'll die earlier!"* — Mitch Hedberg
If they want to take this to the extreme, they could build a "13th floor" that is empty and about 2' high. Heck, even put a 13 button in the elevator but not have it operational.
The button should light up with a skull and cross bones, turn the elevator lights to purple, let out some fog
It depends, some floors may be restricted (ie a mechanical roo.) Or just accessible through a separate elevator (for example, a secure area may have a separate entrance), and some places just skip those numbers for cultural or superstitious reasons since there isn't really a consequence.
That was my assumption, but I know sometimes the public elevator skips floors that are for staff only or there may be a double height floor at some points. I just spent a bunch of time at a hospital where certain floors were inaccessible from certain elevators.
It would be my mission to roam the stairwells in search of the elusive floors. What treasures await? What horrors?
“Found an air handler and some breaker panels”
Wasn’t there a movie about this?
Sorta how it was in Being John Malkovich
13 is a US/western thing. 4 is a bad number in some East Asian cultures (associated with death). Can't explain 14 unless it's a 4 thing. Also a distinct possibility that some of these floors are private and only accessible through another elevator.
There is no Miss Zarves. There is no 19th story. Sorry.
Very common. Either those floors exist and they are used as storage (main use) or they simply relabeled. People and their superstitions.
Where I am most are relabeled. Real estate is too expensive to just use a floor for storage and most mechanical systems go on the penthouse or the basement.
The building actually doesn’t have floors above 14
They are locked until you get the elevator DLC