…or TZBD’s as I like to call 'em. First I ask myself, :Do they exist?". Then I ask, “What would life be like for them?”. How much of an inconvenience would it be? Let say a TZBD lived just west of the EST/CT time zone, but his work/job was on the east side. Would he have to wake up an hour earlier than he would if he lived in the EST zone, just so he could be on time?
I’m sure this brings up other advantages/disadvantages - but what is thier life like? How do they get around these fundamental problems? And, furthur more, why the hell don’t they move?
I imagine that a TZBD, as you have dubbed them, learns to deal with the changes. There are always hassles about where you live: traffic, weather, etc. Time changes are just another type of one.
As a side note and to make things more interesting there appear to be non hour divided time zones so someone could be in one place where it’s 10:00 and drive a short distance where it’s 10:30… how consufing would that be?
On a couple of occasions I have been a TZBD as you discribe it. Most recently I lived in the Mountain Time Zone and worked in Central Time.
One adapts. Getting to work by 8 a.m. central time meant living home at 6:30 a.m. mountain, and despite leaving work at 4:30, we would always make it home by 4 p.m. But generally what we did since my wife and I both worked in central time, was to just set all our clocks on central time.
Basically for TZBDs, everyone in the area realizes the situation and publishes or puts on the radio or prints on fliers all things like concerts, plays, athletic events, etc. with both times to avoid confusion. In addition, everyone mentally makes conversions depending on what side of the time zone line an activity happens on.
Still it is not unknown for people to regularly show up an hour early or late for a party or some such social activity. You assume they made the conversion when they invited you or assume they didn’t make the conversion when they invited you. Still it is relatively rare, and if it does happen, people understand it.
Occasionally out of zoners don’t realize that there is a time difference and they miss interviews, meetings or appointments that can be very embarrassing for them. Still generally, those in charge usually either make allowances for them or make a point of reminding them of the time difference as many times as possible.
There are a number of nice things involved with the situation. Rush hour is more spread out, so there is much less intense driving to and from work. Cafes and restaurants are not jam packed at the dining hour since the dining hour is spread out more. Things are open before or after work, and you don’t have to take time off from work to shop or meet with your accountant or the like.
Basically, since “time” is such an artificial thing anyway, people just adapt.
As a side note and to make things more interesting there appear to be non hour divided time zones so someone could be in one place where it’s 10:00 and drive a short distance where it’s 10:30… how consufing would that be?
I’ve been a TZBD twice - once living about as far west in the Eastern Time Zone as you can, and the other time about as far east in the Central as you can be. Aside from the obvious strangeness (“Jeez it’s nearly 8:00. I’ve got to be there by 7:30, I’d better leave soon!”), another interesting aspect is the extreme times when sunset and sunrise occur. If you live on the far eastern side of a time zone, the sun is down and it’s dark at 4:30 in the afternoon in the winter. If you’re in the western part of a time zone, on the same winter’s day, the sun doesn’t come up until after 7:00 in the morning.
I lived in the CTZ almost on the Illinois/Indiana border, and this time of year the sun was streaming through my east facing bedroom window at 5:15!
While we’re on the subject, how about people who live in western China? I’ve always found it odd that China has just one time zone for the ENTIRE COUNTRY! It must be like living in California, but always having to be on New York time. I suppose one advantage would be that you’d tend to have available daylight after work, though that would come at the cost of having to start work in the dark year round.
Javaman, I’m not sure I see your point. Simply because you are in the same time zone as someone else does not mean you have to conform to the traditional 8 to 5 routine. If one hour after sun rise is 11 on your clock then what is too keep you from going to work then? The numbers on a clock need not dictate when you work or stop.
As an example, a number of British concerns world wide function on Geenwich Mean Time and there is no problem and it doesn’t necessitate people going in at 4 a.m.
Well, my wife and I did something like that when we visited Hawaii (from Ohio) years ago.
It was great. We simply never reset our watches to Hawaii time when we landed. Every day we’d sleep in until “noon,” and still have 14 hours of daylight to see the sights.
I live in Indiana and work in Illinois - all I can say is that after an initial period of arriving/departing an hour off the time you want to, you adjust. Since part of what I do at my job is arrange teleconferences between people scattered all over the country, the way my cross-border life forces me to become adept at TZ conversions in my head and on the fly has actually resulted in a marketable job skill.
Frankly, I find the tax situation of my cross-border existance to be far more annoying that the time factor. That and having to deal with two different sets of laws all the time. Like remembering to unload the fireworks and guns from the pick-up before entering Illinois, and remembering I can’t buy booze in Indiana on Sundays, and keeping straight which lottery game tickets are sold on which side of the border.
While I have never actually lived in one time zone and worked in another, for most of my life I lived fairly close(about 10 miles) to the Eastern/Central time switch. I went to private school, which meant I had friends who left home an hour earlier than they would have had to had they lived just a few miles east.
Now, I live in Atlanta, and in one department at work we have a young lady who lives in Alabama(Central time), but works in downtown Atlanta(Eastern time). One week a month she gets to the office at 5AM or earlier. It’s an hour drive for her, minimum. Which means she left home at 4 eastern, which is 3 Central. Yikes.
It’s not so hard to get used to though. You learn to adjust your thinking so that you’re not extremely late or far too early. And once you get through the initial shock, it’s rather nice. I wouldn’t move just for the sole purpose for living that way again, but I wouldn’t be upset if it ended up happening again.
Hey, Broomstick! What is it with you people over there? I live in Ohio, but I’ve worked and traveled in Indiana, and the thing that drives me nuts is the county-to-county DST thing. Of course, that was some years ago… Do y’all still do that?
Actually, this is an improvement to the general state of the world which I would like to see, but which will never happen of course - simply do away with the idiot time zones, and quit assuming that it’s a requirement that time of day be related to the position of the Sun. Then, when I’m communicating with somebody, say, in London, we don’t have to do mental arithmetic to translate our respective times, we just note things like, “Well, here in California, business hours are generally 2:00 AM to 10:00 AM”, and we know how to negotiate reasonable times for phone calls and so on. I’ll even let you keep the AM/PM designators instead of 24 hour time, though what they stand for has become irrelevent.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there is some organization as futile as the duodecimal society proposing this.
I used to live in the Central Time Zone right on the edge of Mountain Time. Since I rarely had any reason to cross into Mountain Time, it really didn’t feel all that different. It was kind of cool, though, to have the “10/11 News” on television. And on the rare occasion that I flew into Denver, it was entertaining that my arrival time there was five minutes earlier than my departure time from Nebraska.
What’s really weird are those areas where time is shorter, or longer, depending on the time of year. Like the Saint Petersburg White Nights, where it’s light out 24 hours, I believe. THAT would be sooo neat!
You mean, like how the time zone line doesn’t follow the state border but staggers drunkenly across the state along county lines, and how some counties have daylight savings time and some don’t?
Yep, it’s still like that “Let’s see, I want to go from Merriville to South Bend and it’s February… this time of year they’re an hour apart, but in July the clocks are the same…”
Southernmost Labrador is on Newfoundland Time. The neighbouring Lower North Shore is on Atlantic Time. Except that they don’t use daylight time. So, for half the year, there is a 1/2 hour difference between the two, and the other half, there’s 1 1/2 hour difference. Now THAT is confusion.