The Americans might be right on this one. Perhaps if we give them this one they will give us the metric system.
In Europe a lot of countries name the “ground level” floor something because historically “zero” was a bad number, so they instead called it something else because the logic was to start at 0.
It’s kinda like how some buildings in the USA exclude the 13th floor.
Little fun fact btw - the whole foods database used to exclude Friday the 13th. Found this out when I worked there and was trying to show my receipt for something I got, and when the manager looked, we couldn’t find it. Then another coworker came in and brought up something they brought up the day before and it couldn’t be found either.
After a bit, we found it Thursday 12th, but then when scrolling saw it skipped Friday 13th and instead went straight to Saturday 14th.
honestly it’s a terrible number.
0/10
Wait. I am pretty sure that i live in America, and here the buildings start at zero. 012 denotes room 12 on floor zero. Room 112 is the first floor room 12 and so on.
Room 112 is on ground level at every hotel I can remember, including on a trip last month. Well, it would have been on the ground level but that floor is all lobby and conference rooms so the lowest toom number was 201 and was on the second floor.
Previous buildings with rooms on the ground level were the 100s.
The building i am in right now has the elevator list the ground floor as G and the next floor up as 1. I can see that there is really no consistency. In buildings that have the ground floor as 1…. Are their basements listed as 0? It can’t be G for sure. Or do they skip right to -1?
I’ve seen B and SB (basement and subbasement) on elevator buttons. Generally those are floors that the public isn’t allowed to go to and I never had the right key to activate them so I don’t know what was there.
I’ve also seen B1 B2 B3 B4 B5 for different basement levels, though I don’t remember which was on top. Those were all parking levels though so no rooms were numbered.
Usually I’ve seen rooms starting with zero as a basement level, although due to terrain (such as being on a hillside) there could still be direct access to the outside ground. This is especially the case in residential/apartment buildings where windows and direct emergency egress is legally required. Things get wacky when the terrain around a building is not uniformly flat. It can be even weirder in big cities like New York where there might be an entrance at the street level but the hotel reception is up a level because the entrance to a parking garage is at the street level, then above the lobby level there’s maybe a mezzanine level with conference rooms, and then above that is the floor where rooms start and while an American might call that floor 4 or a European would call it floor 3, it might be labeled in the elevator as floor 1, 2, 3, or 4.
The things I have always seen as consistent in the US is whatever number a hotel room starts with is the number you press in the elevator. If you’re in room 647 press floor 6; if you’re in room 1232 press floor 12. Also, whatever level has a star ⭐️ in the elevator is the floor they consider the level with the main entrance. You’ll find the reception/front desk there and it should be obvious where to go for a taxi. It might not be the level to go out if you’ve parked a car, though, especially if the hotel has a parking garage.
Are you in the US, and what kind of building is it?
I don’t ever remember seeing a separate ground and 1st floor in a building, although I haven’t been in every building.
I’ve seen it once, the building was built on a hill, so both ground and 1st had street level entrances on opposite sides.
You just triggered a flashback about a weird parking garage that had Ground between P1 and P2 so that it would line up with the hotel’s Ground floor!
It went:
- P3
- P2
- Ground
- P1
Now that you mention the slopes, I do have a fuzzy recollection of a building on a slope having a separate Ground floor from the numbered floors for street level access. 1st floor was the main lobby.
I can’t think of one on flat ground ever having separate Ground and 1st floors though.
In the US we use either 1st floor and Ground floor to refer to the same floor. The second and higher floors are consistently named though, except for those buildings that skip the 13th floor.
except for those buildings that skip the 13th floor.
When I was in Malaysia, buildings marked floors in British English and skipped any number ending in four (bad luck for Chinese). #MildlyInfuriating
Singapore is even more bonkers because they have eastern and western superstitions to accommodate, plus it’s a really densely-built island so tall buildings are extremely common.
Not always, nothing like the US and inconsistency, I work in the northeast US on a college campus our buildings have G-1-2-3…even the newer buildings follow it.
When your country is made of tiny countries (states) with comparable sizes and populations to European countries there are always going to be exceptions.
Really? Which campus? Any pics?
A university in Babish’s hometown. I’d rather not doxx myself more than that.
It genuinely seems asinine to me to call the floor above the ground floor the first floor.
It would be if you did it in the US, where everybody knows the ground floor is the first floor. Here in Europe, it’s just taught that way from birth, so everybody knows that the first floor is above ground and there’s no confusion.
I understand not getting confused. That doesn’t mean calling the second floor that you put your feet on “the first floor” makes sense.
It makes total sense of you don’t consider the first level a real floor because it’s just, like, ground (duh). /hj
It makes perfect sense if you learn it that way! It’s hardly asinine in any case. I don’t think it’s ever caused a problem, except for Americans in Europe getting confused by it or vice versa.
It gets worse after the 12th floor where American buildings skip the 13th floor because it’s bad luck.
Only in old buildings.
A bunch of new apartment buildings I visit don’t GAF.
This probably used to be way more common, like when skyscrapers first became a thing, but I’m an American and was recently in an elevator that had the 13th floor button. It’s definitely not a universal truth or like a building code violation or anything
13th floor is probably where the secret agents spy on all the other floors.
They are just trying reverse psychology by showing the button now.
Might be a fake 13. They’ll have a button for 13 in the elevator, but 14 actually gives you 13, 15 gives you 14, etc. That way nobody ever thinks they’re on 13, and the fake button convinces them that there is in fact a 13th floor. Or 13 is a mechanical floor.
You can only believe that if you haven’t used the stairs once.
Me: What is this we’re standing on?
Patrick: The floor.
Me: And if I go up the stairs, what will I be standing on?
Patrick: The floor.
Me: So there is a floor above this one?
Patrick: Yes.
Me: And in order, that floor upstairs would come after this one?
Patrick: Yes.
Me: So, that would make it the second floor I’ve touched after coming inside?
Patrick: Yes.
Me: So which floor are we on now?
Patrick: Ground floor.
On the ground floor, you’re standing on the ground which has been covered by a (hopefully nice) floor.
What is -1 + 1? So which floor do you end up on if you go up one floor from the basement?
Edit: but apparently you don’t call those -1, -2, etc, but B1, B2, etc, is that right?
That’s correct. It’s a building, not a number line.
The benefit of starting the number at 1 is the majority of apartment blocks and hotels can have 4 digit room numbers with the first digit representing the floor it’s on.
E.g. room 4201 is on 4th floor and 1691 is on 1st floor
Room 0123 isn’t an option? With 0 being the ground floor?
It’s not the zeroth floor, it’s the ground floor. G123.
I like this system, but only above ground. I had a meeting room that was in 0008 and that just hurts to say verbally.
- Zero-zero-zero-eight
- Triple-zero-eight
- Room 8
- Zero-zero-eight (I hated this one the most.)
On the second floor you would say something like twenty-o-eight.
“Room eight”
“Room two thousand eight”
This is surprisingly annoying where I live and some houses use the British way and everyone uses the American way in speech.
We live on the American second floor. So whenever someone new comes to visit there is no easy answer to where our apartment is: if I tell them we are on the first floor, they won’t find us looking on the ground floor. If I say come to the second floor, they may use the elevator and press 2 which will then take them to the third floor.
Happens almost every time I’m not specific enough.
For people that start at 1: what do you call the basement floors?
-1, -2, -3,… (JK) But not quite, we just call them B1, B2, and so on.
B# (eg. B1, B2, B3, etc…)
I would be okay with this if Britain started with the zeroth floor.
And basement levels are into the negatives.
This is how some lift buttons work in the UK. Admittedly ground is often G, but it’s also often 0.
In German we call the floors “Geschoss” we have “Erdgeschoss” (earth-floor) and then “Obergeschoss” (above-floor) “Untergeschoss” (under-floor). So you have the ground floor called EG, above it is 1.OG then 2.OG, etc. From the EG downwards there is the 1.UG and further down the 2.UG, etc.
With this terminology there can’t be any confusion, because there needs to be a reference floor from which to count up and down. Lucky us.
But it’s also quite common to Just say “Stock(werk)”. The “1. Stock” is equivalent to the British 1st floor then.
What if there’s a hill, but on the ground floor there’s an entrance and one the 1OG there’s also an entrance? Technically both are at ground level, but one is in the lower part of the hill and the other day the higher part of the hill.
I mention it because there’s plenty of buildings like that in Finland
Sometimes (not sure how regional it is, but at least where I live, it’s predominant), „Stock“ is also used for upper floors, so you have „Erdgeschoss“ and then „1. Stock“, „2. Stock“, etc.
You wouldn’t use this in official descriptions but in conversation this is wayyy more common.
Oh, and if you live directly under the roof, you can also refer to that as „Dachgeschoss“ (“roof floor”), especially if you, like me, lost count on which floor number you actually live.
ArraysBuildings start at zero.I learned this when I was a wee lad: I was playing Runescape and trying to solve a quest I was stuck on with a walkthrough. The guide said that the macguffin was on the first floor of some building, and I must have spent hours looking on the ground floor with no luck.
I finally asked my big brother for help and he said, “Have you tried looking upstairs?” And there it was, blew my mind.
This is why the wiki now has a converter for British to American floorings
Dude, I had the same problem, but with a clue scroll! I cannot tell you how long I spent searching the bottom floor of buildings around the Ardougne square…
#Computergamestaughtmesomething
I became proficient at typing for Runescape.
I learned about scams and how to be weary of them from RuneScape
That too!
I learned scripting from MUDs. That’s really how I learned automation and why I have the job I have today.
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