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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

What about at a store selling clocks in the Mall?

I worked selling watches for a time in my life and we were instructed that every watch on display had to be set and stopped at 10:10. Looking that up it seems to not have been specific to just the company I worked for.[1] So, counter-intuitively, a store selling clocks at the mall might not have the time displayed either. :)

[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....

Fascinating. I don’t remember where I picked up the same habit of setting broken clocks to 10:10, but I do the same with a couple of grandfather clocks I own for sentimental reasons.

British comedian Dave Gorman claims the clocks are set to that time (actually 10.08 in his example), because that makes them look happy, and they sell better that way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSCRifY0H3Y

Mall stores aren't selling high-end timepieces. If the clocks are running, they will visibly disagree unless you pay somebody to handle all of the merch every day, time that could be better spent looking bored.

>Mall stores aren't selling high-end timepieces

Depends on the mall. I've certainly seen 5K and 10K timepieces in mall stores. In some places abroad even seen 100K timepieces next to high end clothing stores in malls.

>If the clocks are running, they will visibly disagree

Well, going the "low-end timepieces" case, the ones working with GPS or NTP time sync, like Apple watches and sports stuff will be on time...

Sure, there will exceptions to any statement such general statement. By and large the majority of mall-clock offerings are going to be of the low-end variety. And even when clocks are remotely synced, you still need somebody going through and changing the batteries. Much cheaper to just set them to 10:10 and leave them unpowered/unwound.

I'd be surprised if I went to buy a watch in a store and they handed me a dead watch. How do I know it even works? If they offered to replace the battery when I purchased it, I would take my business elseware, since I don't know if I trust their ability to change a battery correctly.

Nobody can demonstrate to me that 90 percent of what I buy works before I get it home. This makes little sense to me.

Interesting that I was talking about clocks, and you're talking about watches instead.

The most accurate timepiece is usually the one with a cheap quartz crystal mechanism lol.

They are correct twice daily. Frozen at 10:08!

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