Superstitious practices in the workplace....

[ssibal]

This is something interesting I just learned about the company I work for. I was under the impression that we had 18 stores, numbered from 1-18. Well, I recently learned that the number 13 is skipped so we really have 17 stores. I assume it is because of the unlucky 13 superstition. Anyone have similar tales about your place of work?

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

My company which has letter/number combinations for it's buildings skipped building 4 for some reason. After 20 years of expansion number 12 was built. That was in 2001. The company has shed thousands of jobs and buildings and not only will number 13 not be built, but 1-3, 5, and 8-10 have been sold or evacuated.

Lucky 13 my a**.

 

[Jeff Corey]

An elevator in my building has a "Basement" indicator that is actually I3 stencil style.

 

[PinkRabbit]

I worked in tech/design in live theater for about 15 years, and there were definitely plenty of superstitions.

I think the most well known is no saying McBeth in the theater unless you're performing the play. Otherwise you're supposed to call it "The Scottish Play." I used to torment actors by whispering Mcbeth when they annoyed me sufficiently.

You're also not supposed to send yellow flowers on opening night, and no wishing good luck.

Also, I've never worked in a theater that wasn't rumored to be haunted (and, yes, I did one time see something awfully damn strange---I won't call it a ghost, but I honestly don't know what it was). The last costume shop I worked in was supposed haunted by the ghost of the previous costume shop manager, and we were supposed to ask her to return anything that had gone missing. And no, I didn't believe in that.

Sitting around trading ghost stories of various stories we'd all worked at was also one of the hobbies during breaks and downtimes. Hey, it kept us entertained, though I don't think much of anybody actually believed it.

Btw, at my old university, there was an accidental stabbing onstage during my last year (happened during Merchant of Venice---the actor wasn't killed, but he was pretty badly hurt), and my ex roommate later knew some of the kids in the dept. They knew about the stabbing, but it had been attributed to someone saying Mcbeth efore the start of the show. Totally ridiculous. It was bad blocking, and a stupid director who didn't make use of the fight choreographer we had on staff to make sure the scene was safely done. It was kind of an interesting example of how these myths grow over time.

Barb

 

[Sansha]

Naturopath

My workplace (an ombudsman's office) runs regular Employee Support Service workshops designed to assist us in managing stress. On one occasions we had a Naturopath who basically told everyone a load of nonsense and gave us a spray for dissipating negative energy.

It was interesting, however, to note that only female staff members attended and whilst they were fairly dismissive of the session after the fact, not one actually questioned the naturopath during the session.

 

[athon]

My 'workplace' is essentially a science/maths staffroom (secondary school teacher). Until recently I thought most of the teachers were pretty skeptical. Until, that is, I found a 'biorhythms' program on our computer. It was to be used for modelling, or something.

I've managed to convince half of the staff that it should be removed. The other half think I'm a little extreme - they mightn't believe in it, but they think it's harmless.

I get a little tired of being thought of as the nutcase. *sigh* somebody has to do it.

Athon

 

[Quasi]

I used to work at a pharmaceutical company, where I was a little older than the rest of the non Ph.D. researchers. One of the IT people was into TCM big time, and was basically a fundamentalist. He had a TCM "Doctor" in Allston MA, who would, when you visited, reduce your life to a fortune cookie fortune and then sell you various healing stuff. He sold one manager dirt from China, as a treatment for chronic bronchitus, where he was required to mix it with water and drink the mud (his bronch. became worse, and lasted many months because he did not take antibiotics.) Another girl took the herbs, which made her throw up violently (she stopped going.) Another girl had no effect whatsoever. I questioned him about the practice and he showed me a web site with all kinds of nonsense like : bear liver extract will cool the heart, and heat the liver. Basically it was so wishy washy the TCM guru can claim anything, and cover up total failure. To sum it up- he really belived in it, and spent all his money taking the treatments to "optimize his health." This is also based on cold reading where the TCM guy will size you up, tell you what you want to hear, and close the sale. He also committed several felonies in importing soil from the PRC without a federal permit. I don't know what happened to him after the company closed.
I also took a poll regarding psychics. Out of ten people, only three (including myself) did not believe in psychics. The other two were a Ph.D. grad from MIT and the shipping clerk, the rest had undergraduate degrees in science, and were between 22 and 24 years old.
I currently work at Harvard Medical School, home of the Osher Institute of CAM, headed by Dr. David Eisenberg. Enough said.

It has occured to me that modern TCM has three treatments: The neutral one with no side effects, the positive, which will give narcotics such as cocaine, and the negative where poison is used. This way the TCM practitioner can make various things happen in the body to make the illusion more convincing. Combined with cold reading, many people are fooled. It wasn't until I was talking with a new age massage therapist that I actually connected "psychics" with health care fraud. Pretty neat link, they both use cold/hot reading techniques.