Friday, April 07, 2006

Standard Daylight Time

Remember the famous interview question about Daylight Saving Time? It started because this has been a pet peeve of mine for years.

Why do companies feel compelled to list their hours of operation in "Standard Time," ie EST, MST, CST, PST?

Do they realize this technically makes the hours wrong for 6 months out of the year (soon to be over 7 months), including right now?

A short list of offenders:

Alienware
BellSouth
Delta Airlines Group Sales
Kyocera
Phizer
Sony
Harvard University

Would people really get confused without the 'S' in there?

Maybe they really stay open an hour later during the summer months, but hope that the confusion will prevent phone calls since they don't expect the consumer to do the time zone math to figure it out. "Let's see, open until 10pm PST. It's 10:30pm now but we're in daylight time, so it's 9:30pm standard time. They must still be open!"

Is it over concern for friends in Arizona or Hawaii (and formerly Indiana) who may get confused due to non observance?

Less is more. Clarity is better. Just ET/MT/CT/PT will suffice.

This concludes my rant of the day. Back to normal life in Pacific Time.

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