About time! If people want to get up earlier or later, then they should do like the Iranians and go to work one hour earlier in the summer. Don't change the clocks.
That way, rather than sounding like they expect something extra in the summer, it sounds like they are making a helpful accommodation in the winter.
(Also, it's probably not even necessary for those with desk jobs. Arguably it's worse because you are less able to experience at least a little daylight after work.)
In fact, I think this is why intermittent fasting is somewhat easy to adopt: it's surprisingly fast to adapt your body to a different meal schedule, as long as you're eating as much as you need.
Also, I'm not sure if it was intentional, but I appreciate your pun. It is indeed about time.
Or do you just expect Australia to adopt a nocturnal working pattern so they can use UTC?
"Nine to five, what a way to make a living... "
> or when is noon.
12 PM. Noon means 12 PM. Changing this isn't really an option.
More to the point:
> Remembering what's a reasonable time of day in each locality is the same amount of information as remembering what their timezones are.
Hey, admitting your proposed change is a Bavarian Fire Drill is the first step towards recovery.
> Nine to five
No? If everyone's on the same time zone, the answer to this is different everywhere.
If you take away timezones and just say "everybody use UTC and somehow figure out how to adjust it to your local conditions", you've just pushed the cost of figuring out reasonable start & end times for different geographies onto every single member of society. All that will happen is people will come up with their own mappings between UTC and local conditions and guess what? They will look pretty close to what we have with timezones right now only it won't be standardized at all--making a huge mess of things. Outlook calendar will have its own mapping and Google Calendar will have a different one. Your company might have its own internal mapping that is different from your suppliers. Whoa be the person who tries to coordinate an event across these mappings ("your company does lunch at 17:49? Ours does it at 18:42 because that is closer to when the sun is overhead and people like to get in around 12:42")
This is all fun to entertain as a thought experiment but we will never get rid of timezones because, quite frankly, they are far to useful.
Yes. (Or better, give employees flexibility to come in at a time that works for them).
> If you take away timezones and just say "everybody use UTC and somehow figure out how to adjust it to your local conditions", you've just pushed the cost of figuring out reasonable start & end times for different geographies onto every single member of society. All that will happen is people will come up with their own mappings between UTC and local conditions and guess what? They will look pretty close to what we have with timezones right now only it won't be standardized at all--making a huge mess of things. Outlook calendar will have its own mapping and Google Calendar will have a different one. Your company might have its own internal mapping that is different from your suppliers. Whoa be the person who tries to coordinate an event across these mappings ("your company does lunch at 17:49? Ours does it at 18:42 because that is closer to when the sun is overhead and people like to get in around 12:42")
"Mapping UTC onto local conditions" is not a problem that you ever have to solve. There are two kinds of problems you need to solve: coordinating events that happen in one location, and coordinating events that happen at a particular instant with people from multiple locations. For the first kind it doesn't matter if every office has its own solution - indeed it's better if every office has its own solution that fits their own conditions and the Norway office can start work at 8 and the Spain office can start at 11 if that suits the local climate, rather than deciding that both those countries are on CET so they'd both better start at 9AM CET. For coordinating a simultaneous event, UTC is the only thing that works (because if you try to use your local time and you get the offsets wrong, neither of you will notice).
> Whoa be the person who tries to coordinate an event across these mappings ("your company does lunch at 17:49? Ours does it at 18:42 because that is closer to when the sun is overhead and people like to get in around 12:42")
What problem does this create that doesn't already exist? If you're trying to arrange a lunch today, some people have lunch at 12, 1 or even 1:30 local time.
EDIT: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/ng-interactive/2018...
Sure, you still have to remember a time difference or negotiate back and forth. That part is the same amount of work. But you avoid a bunch of failure cases:
* Person from a large country with one official timezone (e.g. China) assumes that when the guy in New York says "10AM my time" that means the same as when the guy in San Francisco does. * Weekly call at 10AM New York time, person from elsewhere in the world assumes it's going to be at the same time this week as last week, but it isn't because US DST changed on a different week from everyone else's. * Both people misremember what the offset between their timezones is, think they've agreed on a time, neither notices until the call happens.
Besides, if you phone somebody on another country, you still have to figure out if 3am utc is ok. It's the same amount of work and as easy to memorise than an approximate time zone.
If you communicate with people abroad then you need to be able to agree times with them, even if you never physically meet up. (Apart from anything else, this can be a more human-friendly way to do 24-hour support: have people who live in different parts of the world work on your product and cover support at different times, even if they rarely meet in person).
> Besides, if you phone somebody on another country, you still have to figure out if 3am utc is ok. It's the same amount of work and as easy to memorise than an approximate time zone.
True, but at least you both agree on what time 3AM is, and if you e.g. reverse the sign of the offset then you'll notice this when arranging the call.
The author fails to mention that we could solve the problems that article brings up by making everyone work from 0800 to 1700, globally, once everyone is on UTC. I think people are just bull-headed enough to make this work, even if it means some people never see the Sun ever again. If China can spread one time zone over five, spreading one time zone over twenty four is just a matter of The Same, But Stupider.
You can use it any time you want.
Actually it would be more of a benefit if it were staggered in the winter since lots are on holiday in the summer.
So I propose scrapping summer time and bringing in winter time. That'll confuse the cows.