I realized (as I was commuting) this morning, that some people must live near timezone borders.
How does that work for you? Do you think in work time at home? Home time at work?
It must be easier these days with smartphones and smart watches automatically adjusting time according to you location?
Share your experience please, I’m curious!
Way back in college (20ish years ago) I had a friend that was living on the Illinois/Indiana boarder. He lived in Indiana but went to college in Illinois, so he was going to school in one time zone and working in another. To make matters worse, in those days Indiana had some counties that observed daylight savings and some that didn’t. So he had to keep track of what shift he was on for work in his own county and if it was daylight savings or not, and in case he was making plans with any friends in other counties or just going to stores or appointments or anything, and what times he had to go to class in the other time zone. He says there were days he would show up places three hours late even though he only lived 20 minutes away because he didn’t realize time had sprung forward and he had his watch set on the wrong state.
This was before smartphones, and I think the state has done away with that partially observing the time switch thing.
Personally, I’m a SuperCommuter and commute long distances for work, but only occasionally. So I’ll live on the West Coast but my office is on the East Coast, so I think in office time. For me, 4am is 7am because that’s what time it is for the rest of my team. Occasionally I’ll have to set my internal clock to Guam Time or Amsterdam Time for a couple weeks at a time until a project is done, and it makes it much easier when I fly out there because my brain is already on that rhythm.
How often do you have to make that insane commute?
Completely depends on the project. For general, everyday work, I’ll go out for a day or two once every two or three weeks. For something that needs more detail or collaboration, I’ll go out for a week and then not go back for a month or five weeks. If I’m working on a project outside of my normal office (I mentioned Guam and Amsterdam, but I’ve had projects elsewhere, too), I’ll work from home while I can and then travel there for two to three weeks and during that time I wouldn’t travel to my actual office for months.
I’m in Eastern Time Zone, but work is a 5 minute drive from Central. We get a few occasions where tourists show up an hour late for their scheduled tour because of this.
Do you have procedures to accommodate tourists who made the mistake and arrived an hour late?
If there’s room we just stick 'em on the next tour, easy as. However if they cannot be rescheduled, corporate’s policy is to keep the money and say “sorry, we told you it’s non-refundable.”
Yeah I ain’t staying here much longer.
How often does that happen? That’s kinda sad :/
Maybe 1-3 times a month? We do our best to let customers know when setting up reservations over the phone “Ey, just so you know, corporate don’t do refunds, and we’re in EST. Factor that in when you plan to drive here plz.”
I live in Pacific but work remotely in Mountain. I’ve just adjusted to working 8 - 4 and subtracting an hour in my head anytime someone mentions a time.
It’s starting to look more likely that Wa, Or, and Ca are going to stop observing DST. Then I’ll be 2 hours different from March to November. That seems like it will be harder.
I wish we would. Each state would need a federal exception to stay in DST. I know Washington and Oregon passed legislation saying we will switch if CA does but that all still would require federal exceptions. I think there are a good dozen or so states that want to stick with DST but none have gotten the go ahead. We could stay with PST with no issue though.
Feel lucky that you only have to deal with one other timezone. Doing support for companies that work around the globe makes scheduling a pain in the ass. I don’t think I have started work after 7:30 for almost a decade. Half of that would include a commute.
