The reason I’m asking is that I live in New York, and I have a phone interview scheduled with somebody in California, but near the border with Nevada.
He gave me a range of hours, and invited me to pick a few times I’d be available for a phone interview. The problem is, he specified “Pacific Standard Time”, which confused me, because I thought California was on Daylight time.
I wrote back saying I was available after 4PM “PDT”. It took him a while to get back to me, but he apologized for the delay and said “Friday at 4PM PST would be fine, if you’re still available then.”
What I’ll probably do is be ready to take the call one hour before and after that time, just to make sure, but I’m a little bewildered about the time change issue. Am I missing something?
All of California and Nevada observe Daylight Saving Time. The only US states that do not are Hawaii and Arizona (except for the Navajo Nation). The Pacific Territories, Puerto Rico, and USVI do not observe DST.
Many people do what your contact does. For some reason they think that “EST” or “PST” stand for “whatever time is normally observed at that time of year.” But, after you tried to clarify and he still insisted on PST, maybe he is trying to play some sort of game with you, so I think that your idea of being available for two hours to be sure might be the best.
I doubt that he’s playing a game; probably was just thinking about Pacific versus Eastern time, and just read ‘Pacific time’ whenever he saw either PST or PDT. If you had time for another round, I’d be explicit: “Just want to double-check: You mean 4 PM, current California time (now on daylight savings), right? I’m sorry to have to bother you again, but I’ve seen confusion over daylight time versus standard time before, and like to be sure.”
Depending on the kind of job, and if you have any take on the person, you could be a little more explicit in pointing out your potential new boss’s mistake with “PST” when they probably meant “PDT”. (If it’s a nitpicky job, say law, accounting, or editing, I’d be more likely to demonstrate my ability to read carefully, at the risk of possibly annoying the person).
If there’s not a lot of time, being ready at both possibilities is a good move. If your read during the interview is that nitpicking wins you points, you could always bring it up.
In my dealings with work groups from Manila to Bangalore, I’ve found that people who use “PST”/“PDT” get it wrong about half the time. I don’t know why they even bother to specify the “S” or the “D”. I think it would cause a lot less confusion if they just used “PT”, or even better, “Local Time”.
I agree with the posters that say he’s just confused and doesn’t realize that “PST” means something specific. He believes it means “Pacific Time.”
I used to do the same thing with EST until someone called me out on it, now I always just say “Eastern.” But I would just assume anyone using the “xST” abbreviation means just the x and T part, really.
I went through this recently. Alley Dweller has it. I attempted to clarify, to (gently) explain that PST and PDT were different, but no luck. Just say “I’ll be calling at 4 pm Pacific Time,” and (for California, anyway) there will be no confusion.
Years ago I lived in a state that was a hold out on standard time. I dealt with people all over the company. I found many people quite ignorant about what Standard Time meant. ‘’ We are on Standard Time too, why are you an hour behind us?’’ I have even seen websites that labeled EDT as EST.
My guess is that the person is on PDT and doesn’t understand that PST is only the winter months when you have the clocks turned back.
I wonder if using the old ‘‘fast’’ and ‘‘slow’’ time would be clearer? Of course that would label you old.
Honestly, I consider myself a pretty smart person, but before this topic I had no idea what the difference between PDT and PST (or the rest of them) was. If you asked me to abbreviate Central Time, I’d probably write CST.
I say just go with it. I doubt the guy is in a tiny standard time enclave.
Yes, obviously he’s just not using the nomenclature correctly.
Why would anyone persist to use Standard Time when everyone else around him is on Daylight Time? He’d be an hour late for everything, all day long.
Or he’d have conversations like this:
STANDARD TIME GUY (STG): Let’s meet at 6:30.
REGULAR PERSON (RP): Okay.
STG: But that’s Standard Time.
RP: What do you mean?
STG: I don’t want to meet on Daylight Time. I prefer to meet on Standard Time.
RP: So, what are you saying, exactly?
STG: Just that. I want to meet at 6:30, but not on Daylight Time. I really don’t like Daylight Time.
RP: All of my clocks are set to Daylight Time. So what do you want me to do?
STG: Well, if you can’t meet on Standard Time, then I guess we just can’t meet. Sorry.
As someone who lives in Arizona and never has to reset his clock unless traveling, I will weigh in with the people who think he’s just confused. I have to deal with this all the time and it has always turned out that the person specifying Daylight when they were on Standard )or vice-versa) was just using the acronym that they usually heard for their area with no regard to its current accuracy.
(One of my pet peeves during the summer months is when people, usually in NY, tell me that Arizona has switched to California time and cannot comprehend my protestations that we didn’t switch at all–butthat California did. “But I’m still 3 hours different from California,” they whine, “and now I’m 3 hours from you too so you must have changed to match them!”)
Not only that, New York has switched ahead an hour, too, keeping them three hours ahead in relation to California. You’re right, we in Arizona don’t change, but it confuses the hell out of people in the rest of the country.
This is what I do. I don’t necessarily try to make anyone else do it, but I’ve found it so much easier.
Adding the S or D is nonsensical. There is no point during the DST period in which Standard Time is at all useful and vice versa. There is no reason at all to differentiate. 4 pm Pacific/PT makes exactly as much sense on January 1st as it does on August 1st and there is no possible way someone is going to get confused.
Obviously you still need to pay attention to when DST clicks on and off, but that’s it.
The entire state is on Pacific, with the exception of West Wendover, which is Mountain, and Jackpot, which is “unofficially” Mountain. Both have greater links to Utah, and I think are very Mormon.
