Time Zones
 

Are you a stickler about the correct use of time zones?

As a business traveler I feel obligated to keep up-to-date with time zones and Daylight Saving Time observances.

My sales people (even the travelers) don't.

When I send an appointment I typically say "Eastern" to indicate that I'm talking about the current Eastern observance. My coworkers like to use EST all year which I feel is incorrect.

Now we're talking about a client in AZ. AZ is technically MST or "Arizona Time" all year. Sales person talks about "this is the one place in AZ that doesn't observe DST". I'm confused by her comment and proceed to give her a diatribe about time zones for the second time in a week.

Does anyone else who regularly manages multiple time zones for scheduling and catching flights feel the same way?

I'm sure that it is shortly after 5:30 pm somwhere in the world. Accordingly, I'm going home. ;)

On a more serious note, however, I can see how dealing with multiple sets of time zones could cause some havoc and require attention to detail. Perhaps after some people in your sales team miss their flight due to their EST/EDT (or the like) confusion they'll learn that little details matter.

By "one place in AZ" does this sales person mean all of AZ other than the Navajo Nation?

No. She's talking about someone in Ft. Defiance so I am assuming she is talking about the one place that actually observes DST...but I don't like assuming.

I always refer to it by state/city name.

If I was doing a call or something with people in Colorado, California, and New York I would say

Noon (New York), 10 am (Denver), 9 am (San Francisco)

But that's because when I was doing it all the time the people I was working with were not smart enough to handle the entire MST DST thing without having to ask.

Getting the zone and DST code correct is getting critical these days especially since the recent "tweaks" have the US and the rest of the world in flux twice a year (different change dates).

I will say EST year round but also will say the place for other time zones.

Right. If I were doing a lot of international calls I'd probably use GMT offsets.

I am a huge stickler for time-zone acumen! I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one.

US time is relatively easy - it gets a bit tricky in the UK because most people don't realise that the UK is on GMT only when daylight-saving time is not in effect (this is because GMT, or more correctly UTC, never changes); during the summer, the British Isles are on BST (British Summer Time).

However, on the continent, the time zone is CET all year round even though it changes for daylight-saving time as well.

Let's not even get started on Australia and New Zealand.

I keep my watch on UTC wherever I am in the world and simply manage calculations as +/- whatever hours from UTC.

When writing times, I always write them in 24-hour clock with "z" at the end to denote Zulu time. It gets questioned sometimes like when signing in/out of a building, but after I explain the Zulu time concept to the security guard they usually shake their head and let me go.

This reminds me of a SNAFU when I lived in Las Vegas. I was taking seaplane flying lessons in Bullhead City, AZ. I was unaware at the time that AZ had any deviation from standard time protocol. I was also shamefully unaware that it wasn't in the same time zone as NV (I had only moved out there a month earlier). On the first day of instruction, I was two hours late because of the time zone and DST difference. On the following weekend, I showed up an hour early because the switch from DST/ST occurred during that week.

All day long I listen to a support rep in an adjoining cube say "That's 8pm PST" when it fact we're PDT right now.

I always just say "8pm Pacific" or "8pm Pacific Time"

Me too. I also always notice when people say "CST" in the summer and mentally dock them a couple points for it.

Indiana - love it or leave it (but be sure to tell people which time zone you are operating on when you do) - Despite the last round of changes, the state is still split between Eastern and Central, though it does observe DST throughout. A couple of state-wide companies I know refer to Company Time, picking one time zone or the other for all meeting announcements. Of course, I always forget which one they use, and have to call to verify each time anyway, but at least there is internal consistency.

Having a history of business travel to AZ, I also enjoy the point on the Hoover Dam where there are 2 clocks, one with NV time(Pacific, does DST), and one with AZ time (Mountain, no DST). So half the year they are the same.

But if you really want inconsistency, check out the time zones in Australia...

Didn't Indiana change all to one? I remember years ago when seperate counties would choose not to observe DST and it would really screw things up when traveling through.

I am a stickler for people who don't use the D for daylight time.