We’ve had a fairly spirited discussion here at work this week – our order entry system is about to hit order number 666000, and the question came up whether it was worth bumping the number up to 667000 to avoid reading back a number that began ‘six-six-six.’
I’d love to say that we decided to ignore it, but I was actually one of the people who argued for bumping up the numbers, because in a world where buildings and airplanes skip the 13th floor and the 13th row of seats, why risk a one-in-a-thousand chance of offending someone a thousand times? Hmm… I wonder if they give a discount for 14th row seats for people who can count?