Re: What time is it anyhow?
From: Gary LaPook
Date: 2017 Oct 26, 10:10 -0700
I was staying in Nice, France in March 2015. When I left the U.S. we were already on Daylight Savings Time. I had an early morning flight out of Nice to Stockholm on Sunday , the 29th, so I set the alarm to get up early so that I wouldn't miss my flight. The landlord knocked on the door to get my keys. I looked at my watch, it said "seven."
"You're early, you weren't supposed to come until eitght."
"But it is eight, monsieur, we went on summer time this morning at two!"
I was instantly running an hour late, I had to run to pack up and get all the way accross Nice to the airport, and I almost missed my flight!
I had no reason to suspect this surprise and, you don't know what you don't know.
gl
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From: Brad Morris
Date: 2017 Oct 26, 08:36 -0400
The article hits the nail right on the head about coordination.
For a few years, I had a weekly meeting with a client in Melbourne, Australia. I'm in the eastern time zone of the US. Since we didn't switch to or from daylight savings time at the same time they switched to or from daylight savings time it lent itself to insane confusion. Consider, we would both be on standard time. Then one of us would switch to daylight savings time, while the other wouldn't. Later, we would both be on daylight savings time. Each of these time changes engendered a discussion over "when the next meeting would be". Don't forget to add or subtract the large number of time zones by the way!
And then 6 months later, we would go through the same idiocy, only in reverse.
It didn't save any of us a penny. In fact, it wasted ~10 man-hours a year, when you consider the team size and the average length of the discussion(s).
I did find the article's comparison of the longitudinal distance of Alaska and the continental US to be very amusing! After all, the south pole has the greatest longitudinal distance of all and they manage with just one time zone!!!
