7 ms·

It's also usually extremely US-centric. Nobody outside of North America has any idea what "PDT" or "Mountain Time" means.

donalhunt 3y ago
I mostly struggle with Irish Standard Time (used for DST in Ireland) and Indian Standard Time which have the same acronym. :( Thankfully, I learnt a long time ago to use ISO 8601 and UTC for dates and times. I still revert to PST/PDT if my audience is primarily left coast based.
- macksd 3y ago
  And I can't say it's ever actually caused a problem, but something about Indian Standard Time being a half-hour offset from UTC has always bothered me so much... But now we're fully off-topic.
  - mynegation 3y ago
    Oh, hold on to something, while I tell you about Chatham Islands.
- WirelessGigabit 3y ago
  Left coast? That's a term I've never heard of.
- unmole 3y ago
  > I mostly struggle with Irish Standard Time (used for DST in Ireland) and Indian Standard Time which have the same acronym. :( Heh. After the first few instance of confusion, we switched to saying Bangalore time and Dublin time.
jen20 3y ago
Not to mention they conflict. CST can be "Central Standard Time", "China Standard Time" or "Cuba Standard Time" and so forth...
lkbm 3y ago
Probably if you're using AWS, you do, but it would be much more convenient if they just used UTC by default with an option to localize.
tazjin 3y ago
Everyone knows "Mountain Time". It is when you go to the mountains on vacation, and don't spend much time adhering to a strict schedule, instead taking leisurely strolls around the fields and promising vague things like "I'll try to be back for dinner".
- jacobr1 3y ago
  Closely related, yet distinct from, Island Time
jjtheblunt 3y ago
And if you've been American since birth, and live in Arizona, one might still not know, since PDT and Mountain Time alternate covering Arizona seasonally. ("Ask me how i know.")
- Rebelgecko 3y ago
  It can also varies within Arizona... one of the most confusing times in my life was driving from California through the Navajo Reservation in AZ on my way to an appointment. Was my cell phone giving me the local time on the reservation? Was it connecting to a cell tower just outside the reservation, giving me DST-less Arizona time? Or a tower slightly further away in Utah (DST?) Or was it giving me the time on the Hopi reservation, which is an enclave totally surrounded by the Navajo Reservation which uses AZ time?
NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
3 years ago, when I started work for my current employer, I noticed in Slack that everyone was reckoning time in "Standard Time" year-round. Now imagine my chagrin because I live in Arizona, and "Mountain Standard Time" does not change for DST. Therefore, all my coworkers were citing nonsensical, nonexistent time zones and it was messing up my ability to convert back and forth. Come to find out that this was some sort of entrenched, company-wide standard that was deliberately imposed. I made a lot of noise about this and appealed to some rather highly-placed directors, because I felt like it was wildly inaccurate and deceiving people; if you schedule a meeting in EDT but you say it's in EST, and we have employees all around the world, who's going to know? You're inviting off-by-one errors. Especially with me who lives permanently in MST. 3 years on, I've been unable to change this fundamentally; while a few people acknowledge DST, 90% of the company still adheres to this crazy false standard.
- dyingkneepad 3y ago
  How does this generate off-by-one errors? I am also part of a company with employees in pretty much every timezone, but when they create a meeting the meeting invitation is programmed with the correct timezone so in my Calendar it always shows what time the meeting is going to be for me. I never even have to think what timezone the organizer is...
  - Travis_Pastrami 3y ago
    It's the same at my company. Teams and Zoom both automatically schedule meetings in every attendees' own time zone. Maybe that person's company still does phone meetings or something.
    - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
      We don't use any automatic scheduling with Zoom or Google Calendar. Management doesn't send invites to those meetings, they just publish the link on Slack and we have to figure out how to get it into our calendars. Trust me, at least once I missed a meeting because I was late by an hour due to time zone confusion.
inopinatus 3y ago
Unnecessary reflux obtained during US-Australian collaboration from insufficiently specific references to "east coast time".
- sk0g 3y ago
  Even in Australia, AEST has a DST flavour and a non-DST one. Queensland does not observe DST while the other states do. You can drive around a roundabout at the border and switch timezones for fun. Or go down there to celebrate the new year twice. Or go from rabbits being OK to some 5 figure fine if you're caught with one :)
  - inopinatus 3y ago
    my limited understanding of local pejoratives suggests that it remains traditional to sledge QLD for being one hour and twenty years behind
    - jlawer 3y ago
      I believe its traditional to reply that NSW was 8 points behind in the only yard stick those north of the border care about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Origin_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Origin_series

donalhunt 3y ago

I mostly struggle with Irish Standard Time (used for DST in Ireland) and Indian Standard Time which have the same acronym. :( Thankfully, I learnt a long time ago to use ISO 8601 and UTC for dates and times. I still revert to PST/PDT if my audience is primarily left coast based.

macksd 3y ago
And I can't say it's ever actually caused a problem, but something about Indian Standard Time being a half-hour offset from UTC has always bothered me so much... But now we're fully off-topic.
- mynegation 3y ago
  Oh, hold on to something, while I tell you about Chatham Islands.
WirelessGigabit 3y ago
Left coast? That's a term I've never heard of.
unmole 3y ago
> I mostly struggle with Irish Standard Time (used for DST in Ireland) and Indian Standard Time which have the same acronym. :( Heh. After the first few instance of confusion, we switched to saying Bangalore time and Dublin time.

jen20 3y ago

Not to mention they conflict. CST can be "Central Standard Time", "China Standard Time" or "Cuba Standard Time" and so forth...

lkbm 3y ago

Probably if you're using AWS, you do, but it would be much more convenient if they just used UTC by default with an option to localize.

tazjin 3y ago

Everyone knows "Mountain Time". It is when you go to the mountains on vacation, and don't spend much time adhering to a strict schedule, instead taking leisurely strolls around the fields and promising vague things like "I'll try to be back for dinner".

jacobr1 3y ago
Closely related, yet distinct from, Island Time

jjtheblunt 3y ago

And if you've been American since birth, and live in Arizona, one might still not know, since PDT and Mountain Time alternate covering Arizona seasonally. ("Ask me how i know.")

Rebelgecko 3y ago
It can also varies within Arizona... one of the most confusing times in my life was driving from California through the Navajo Reservation in AZ on my way to an appointment. Was my cell phone giving me the local time on the reservation? Was it connecting to a cell tower just outside the reservation, giving me DST-less Arizona time? Or a tower slightly further away in Utah (DST?) Or was it giving me the time on the Hopi reservation, which is an enclave totally surrounded by the Navajo Reservation which uses AZ time?

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago

3 years ago, when I started work for my current employer, I noticed in Slack that everyone was reckoning time in "Standard Time" year-round. Now imagine my chagrin because I live in Arizona, and "Mountain Standard Time" does not change for DST. Therefore, all my coworkers were citing nonsensical, nonexistent time zones and it was messing up my ability to convert back and forth. Come to find out that this was some sort of entrenched, company-wide standard that was deliberately imposed. I made a lot of noise about this and appealed to some rather highly-placed directors, because I felt like it was wildly inaccurate and deceiving people; if you schedule a meeting in EDT but you say it's in EST, and we have employees all around the world, who's going to know? You're inviting off-by-one errors. Especially with me who lives permanently in MST. 3 years on, I've been unable to change this fundamentally; while a few people acknowledge DST, 90% of the company still adheres to this crazy false standard.

dyingkneepad 3y ago
How does this generate off-by-one errors? I am also part of a company with employees in pretty much every timezone, but when they create a meeting the meeting invitation is programmed with the correct timezone so in my Calendar it always shows what time the meeting is going to be for me. I never even have to think what timezone the organizer is...
- Travis_Pastrami 3y ago
  It's the same at my company. Teams and Zoom both automatically schedule meetings in every attendees' own time zone. Maybe that person's company still does phone meetings or something.
  - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
    We don't use any automatic scheduling with Zoom or Google Calendar. Management doesn't send invites to those meetings, they just publish the link on Slack and we have to figure out how to get it into our calendars. Trust me, at least once I missed a meeting because I was late by an hour due to time zone confusion.

inopinatus 3y ago

Unnecessary reflux obtained during US-Australian collaboration from insufficiently specific references to "east coast time".

sk0g 3y ago
Even in Australia, AEST has a DST flavour and a non-DST one. Queensland does not observe DST while the other states do. You can drive around a roundabout at the border and switch timezones for fun. Or go down there to celebrate the new year twice. Or go from rabbits being OK to some 5 figure fine if you're caught with one :)
- inopinatus 3y ago
  my limited understanding of local pejoratives suggests that it remains traditional to sledge QLD for being one hour and twenty years behind
  - jlawer 3y ago
    I believe its traditional to reply that NSW was 8 points behind in the only yard stick those north of the border care about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Origin_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Origin_series