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The USPS used it when I worked there in the 90s. They used 24 hour days with 100 ticks of 36 seconds per each hour. The time clocks operated in this format.
by akira2501 3y ago
The USPS used it when I worked there in the 90s. They used 24 hour days with 100 ticks of 36 seconds per each hour. The time clocks operated in this format.
Which was interesting, until you also realized, they expected you to clock in precisely at the start of your shift, giving you a 36 second window to do it in.
On the first day I was wondering why there were so many time clocks for the size of the office and then I witnessed the shift change "stampede" that this policy incidentally created.
- niklasrde 3y agoHow does the time system relate to the clock-in expectation? Otherwise you would have 60 seconds to do it in, which feels like not much more time?
- aredox 3y agoOh, interesting! Is there an historical explanation somewhere on how and why they adopted this system?
- crazygringo 3y agoWhat happened if you missed it and clocked in the following "minute"?
- akira2501 3y agoIf I recall correctly, for up to 5 "ticks" you could make it up at the end of your shift, for anything more you got reported. It was a union job and so there were a lot of little "parsimonious" rules like this. To answer the other question at the same time, in the 90s, was most shops that used an analog time clock would only advance the stamped time every 5 minutes. So, if you clocked in at 8:04, it would still punch 8:00 on your card. So, it was notable to me at the time that they had clocks with a finer grain of accuracy that fed into their computers immediately, and they actually cared about the "slop" involved in time keeping.
- crazygringo 3y agoThanks! Very interesting.