SC's and superstition

[Eireann]

I've heard a different (though equally interesting) reason for throwing salt over your left shoulder. It's to keep the devil away - the devil hates salt, and he's always at your left side (which is why left-handed people have had such a hard time of it; the devil is always on the left, so if you used your left hand, the devil had power over you). So, throw salt over your shoulder and it'll go right in the devil's face.

Salt was so important to the ancient Romans that their soldiers were paid in salt; the word for this was "salarium", which became the modern-day "salary". The expression "not worth his salt" also comes from this time.

[Antisocial_Worker]

If you get a chance, you should come to Key West, which has been called the second most haunted city in the U.S., after only New Orleans. My hotel...excuse me, the hotel I FORMERLY worked at (yay!) is one of the haunted places, too. Great hotel. (Just my former boss that sucked.)

Robert the Doll!!

After IMAPseudonym's pseudo-visit to Key West, they can mosey up here into the mountains. We were recently named in the top 5 most haunted cities in the country. The last time we had psychic investigators in the Blah Inn, they found five haunted rooms, plus the lobby and hallways, and a total of at least seven or eight different entities. One of the investigators had some sort of fit in one room and had to be carried out.

[Getoutofmylobby]

I could understand not wanting to stay in room 666 or room 1313, but a 3 or 4?
What kind of messed up superstition is that?

Ah, this ending is a bit of a downer but apparently Supersitious Twit is, suprisingly enough, a friend of one of the managers, and according to said manager this guy used to do "alot of hard drugs in his time."

So there you have it. No deep religious beliefs. No Paganism... Just unchecked drug paranoia. And i think his aversion to the burned out lightbulb was probably because he could easily convert it into a crack pipe.

Doomsday indeed.

And I was looking forward to a fulfilling weekend of insulting this guy's beliefs.

[GayleShy]

A few times I got people who get all religious if the total for their purchase was $6.66. They would just toss in an extra penny and that would be the end of it though.

Normally, when to total is 6.66 the people just laugh it of, but I had one woman cross herself and grab a candy bar. She wasn't sucky about it, but you could tell she wasn't acting, either. I said nothing and rang her up.

On a side note, my fifth anniversery at the evil Smiley Store fell on 06-06-06 last year, which all my co-workers found oddly fitting. I have quite the "weirdo" rep at my store, which is how I've lasted so long.

[Gawdzillers]

In 'The Family' did he mean like a Charles Manson-type family? Or the family living in his head?



Be afraid, be very afraid.

Hey guys, there's a party at Sharon Tate's house! Now, you can come, but have to promise not to embarass me.

[MadMike]

A few times I got people who get all religious if the total for their purchase was $6.66. They would just toss in an extra penny and that would be the end of it though.

I had that happen once when I got gas. Obviously, this was when it was much, much cheaper. It actually stopped at $6.64, but just to be a smartass, I squeeze two more cents into it. I went inside to pay, and when the clerk brought up the pump total, I thought she was going to have a heart attack!

More recently, I went to one of the fast food places for some lunch, and the total came up to... you guessed it, $6.66. The cashier got this uncomfortable look on her face, like she was afraid I was going to freak on her (how many guys with long hair wearing a Slayer shirt would freak out of that?) Without missing a beat, I smiled and said, "I guess this is going to be one helluva meal!" She smiled back, and all was well.

[protege]

Somehow I can imagine you doing that, Mike

Speaking of that number, I scared the crap out of one of my friends at the gym one night. She's a born-again Christian, and came over to chat while I was finishing up. She just happened to look at the panel on the cardio machine...and I thought she was going to faint. I still don't see what the big deal is about that number.

If you think that's bad, Conrail had an SD45-2. Railfans called it the "Superbeast" because of its number, 6666.

http://rr-fallenflags.org/cr/cr6666afm.jpg

[NightAngel]

Railfans called it the "Superbeast" because of its number, 6666.

A friend of mine used to have a t-shirt that read "668: The neighbor of the Beast."

[Sonoma]

A friend of mine used to have a t-shirt that read "668: The neighbor of the Beast."

Our Resident Advisor in college lived in room 333. Of course, you know her room was dubbed "Halfway to you-know-where"

[Polenicus]

I remember way back in the early days of working, when I was but a toddling, precocious teenager and hadn't yet forgotten the answer to the Life, the Universe and Everything (Because teenagers know everything, naturally) I used to work in a Lotto booth selling nothing but lottery tickets.

If you want something to draw the superstition, try legalized gambling.

Now, I guess I can understand the delusion or trying t pick out a particular scratch-n-win ticket because it 'feels lucky'. When your chances of winning are basically one-in-fish, you gotta have a lot of faith to plunk down that $2 to begin with. But I've seen all sorts of weird rituals:

- Will only buy tickets of certain number sequences

- Request that I perform all sorts of bizarre rituals and blessings on said ticket in order to transfer some kind of positive lotto energy to it

- Request I print the tickets in a certain sequence (These are use-selected numbers too, so the tickets are the same regardless of when I print them)

- Demand a scratch ticket from the safe rather than the display (Y'know, because the ones from the safe are fresher. Stale scratch-n-wins just don't win as often. It's a scientific fact)

- Use a lucky 'scratching coin', and ONLY that to scratch, to the point where if the coin is lost or not on their person, they will either not scratch the ticket until they find it, or attempt to return the ticket. (The lottery company actually perpetrated this by minting limited runs of 'ticket scratcher' coins.)

- Wanting to trade me a coin for one from my pocket, because being in the possession of a lottery employee makes it 'lucky'

- Scratching the tickets only in a very specific pattern.

- Insisting it was bad luck to scratch the tickets at the lotto booth

- Believing that I had the personal power to make a ticket a winner, be it scratch, Keno, Lotto or any other type.

I'm sure there are more, but it's been about 15 years since I worked there (Oh god... I'm OLD! )

[MystyGlyttyr]

Here at the newspaper, we always measure by the full moon. Without fail in the 26 months I've been here, our levels of customer insanity rise and fall with the moon phases. I thought it was just superstitious stuff too, but I actually started keeping records of it and "crazies" got more marks as the moon was waxing, maxed out during the two fullest days, and dropped back off afterwards. Sometimes we really rag on someone who tries to call out sick during full moon because we say they're trying to escape

I have noticed a couple things. Down here in Arkansas, when you buy anything off the McDonalds dollar menu, it rings up with tax as $1.11. So I got the bright idea to order six things off there to get the total to $6.66 and see how the employee reacted. (I get bored, there's not a lot to do down here and hey, McChickens are GOOD nuked.)

However, at every McDonalds I've tried this at, the total ALWAYS comes to either 6.65 or 6.67. ALWAYS! It just totally takes the fun out of it.

[Jester]

Robert the Doll!!

Yep. "Blame it on Robert!"

Our Resident Advisor in college lived in room 333. Of course, you know her room was dubbed "Halfway to you-know-where"

That is very amusing to me, as my favorite number is 3, and my one friend and I joke that we are "haunted" by the number 3. For instance, Key West's area code is 33040, but the funny thing is, the number of my street address is (I shit you not) 3333. My friend freaked when I moved in here.

One time years ago at a restaurant I worked at, at the end of my shift, I ran my server financial report. My total sales for that day were $333.33. That was weird enough, until I noticed something else....it was March 3rd. 3/3. THAT was downright spooky! Heheheheh.....Good thing I like the number, huh?

[Myra]

Here at the newspaper, we always measure by the full moon. Without fail in the 26 months I've been here, our levels of customer insanity rise and fall with the moon phases. I thought it was just superstitious stuff too, but I actually started keeping records of it and "crazies" got more marks as the moon was waxing, maxed out during the two fullest days, and dropped back off afterwards. Sometimes we really rag on someone who tries to call out sick during full moon because we say they're trying to escape

Oh try working a nursing home on a full moon. The dementia patients are always more out of it in the evenings - they call it "sundowning" - but at a full moon, it's INSANE. That's when we had all the medical emergencies, call lights, all sorts of fun.

Oh another nursing home superstition: if someone died, the FIRST thing you had to do after a nurse checks to see that they in fact have passed on, is to open a window. That way the soul can escape, and we don't have a haunted room. I dunno how true it was, but I didn't wanna find out, so I always opened the window. (Biggest reason I left that job...I couldn't handle being around all that death...but that's a long story for another post!)

The other day at the gas station, a couple with a child had a total of $6.66. The dad DOVE for a candy display and snatched up the first candy bar he saw, as if the longer their total lingered on $6.66, the more likely they were to get struck by lightening or something. It was amusing is all. The whole way out, the son is going "Why did Dad get that candy? What's wrong?" I overheard the mom saying something like "That's the devil's number..." It was amusing.

[XCashier]

I remember way back in the early days of working, when I was but a toddling, precocious teenager and hadn't yet forgotten the answer to the Life, the Universe and Everything

You forgot The Answer? It's 42!

[tollbaby]

If you want something to draw the superstition, try legalized gambling.

Gah. My first retail job was working at a booth in the mall that sold nothing but bus tickets/passes and lottery tickets. UGH. I used to hate all that crap.

Fortunately, the OLC handbook at the time (now the OLGC or something like that) had rules that employees were not permitted to do anything that might be perceived as attempting to increase a customer's luck. I had this one old guy who, no word of a lie, spent $100/day on scratch tickets. He used to want me to scratch them off for him (Personally, I think it was more because it made my boobs jiggle than for any "luck", but anyway).. and I was ever so sorry to tell him that the corporation wouldn't permit me to touch his tickets except for validation once he had purchased them

People get seriously nutty about their lotto tickets.