You have double burners. Some of your knobs have two HI and two LO positions, one for one burner and one for both burners.

On top of the stove this looks like two concentric heating elements. You can turn on one or both. Turning on both is sometimes called a “fast boil” burner.

The best solution the industry has come up with is to put two control surfaces into one knob, so instead of the control surface being a full circle it’s a half circle.

There’s no way to make all the knobs match in appearance unless all the burners have optional double burner operation.

source: am appliance salesman.

You'll love it more when the numbers get washed off. Here's mine.

One office I worked in had a toaster with a knob where "off" is almost all the way to the left.

Turning the knob to the right lets you control the toasting time, like any other knob-based timer.

But if you turn it left from the "off" position, that's the "stay on" position.

So if you'd set the timer, and then wanted to cancel it, you can't just turn it all the way left like on any other knob timer. If you do that, you're telling it to stay on forever and eventually scorch the table and set off the fire alarm.

At first I thought this was a new Marshall amp.

This looks like an AI-generated fever dream nightmare.

That last one is what kills me. Three different ranges of lo-hi, who does that?

My high ass would burn the house down using this.

My dryer has a "less dry" setting.

Who likes their laundry done rare?

The longer I stare at it, the worse it gets ...

At least “Off” is consistent. That could have been a total train wreck.

Looking at the one in the top left... imagine if that was for an amplifier. Like, you have to pass through maximum to reach off. That would be the worst to live near.

This is actually pretty infuriating for me to look at and I´m getting violent impulses from it. You should at least have put a trigger warning before it you monster!

I can explain this one! When the knob only has one set of hi/lo, it controls the burner's heat as you'd expect, and it all works in the same direction. Those with multiple hi/lo sets control the heat and the size of the burner, since there are 2 (and on one, maybe 3?) concentric heating elements available for that knob.

I've had something similar for years, and have never had an issue. I'm even less likely to accidentally choose the wrong knob since the single-size one tends to have a looser feel to it.