Commuting across timezones
Commuting across timezones
Accurate, detailed time zone borders for North America, including Daylight Saving time observance and unofficial local exceptions to official time. Magenta lines represent constant time zone borders. Cyan (light blue) lines represent those that apply only during Daylight Saving Time. Dark blue li...
I realized (as I was commuting) this morning, that some people must live near timezone borders.
How does that work for you? Do you think in work time at home? Home time at work?
It must be easier these days with smartphones and smart watches automatically adjusting time according to you location?
Share your experience please, I'm curious!
I'm in Eastern Time Zone, but work is a 5 minute drive from Central. We get a few occasions where tourists show up an hour late for their scheduled tour because of this.
Do you have procedures to accommodate tourists who made the mistake and arrived an hour late?
I once took my then girlfriend to the Isle of Skye, on what happened to be the day the clocks went back.
It wasn't until a week later while travelling back she asked why her clock hadn't changed back
Took me a while to work out she thought Skye had its own time zone
Most adorable thing ever (for reference, Skye is only 50 miles long, and about a mile from the mainland) 😊
I live in Pacific but work remotely in Mountain. I've just adjusted to working 8 - 4 and subtracting an hour in my head anytime someone mentions a time.
It's starting to look more likely that Wa, Or, and Ca are going to stop observing DST. Then I'll be 2 hours different from March to November. That seems like it will be harder.
I wish we would. Each state would need a federal exception to stay in DST. I know Washington and Oregon passed legislation saying we will switch if CA does but that all still would require federal exceptions. I think there are a good dozen or so states that want to stick with DST but none have gotten the go ahead. We could stay with PST with no issue though.
Feel lucky that you only have to deal with one other timezone. Doing support for companies that work around the globe makes scheduling a pain in the ass. I don't think I have started work after 7:30 for almost a decade. Half of that would include a commute.
For three months last year I was living in Barcelona and working in EST hours (3-11PM local time). I always thought in terms of local time except when at work where I'd shift my thinking into PST (the majority timezone in my office).
It worked out pretty fantastically and allowed me to essentially have a personal day before each work day - rather than being exhausted from work and stumbling into cooking dinner and collapsing in front of the TV equivalent I was able to fully enjoy my personal time (including the big siesta meal) before facing the work day. I really tapered off that last hour at work but otherwise my productivity was way up and work was less dreadful.
Way back in college (20ish years ago) I had a friend that was living on the Illinois/Indiana boarder. He lived in Indiana but went to college in Illinois, so he was going to school in one time zone and working in another. To make matters worse, in those days Indiana had some counties that observed daylight savings and some that didn't. So he had to keep track of what shift he was on for work in his own county and if it was daylight savings or not, and in case he was making plans with any friends in other counties or just going to stores or appointments or anything, and what times he had to go to class in the other time zone. He says there were days he would show up places three hours late even though he only lived 20 minutes away because he didn't realize time had sprung forward and he had his watch set on the wrong state.
This was before smartphones, and I think the state has done away with that partially observing the time switch thing.
Personally, I'm a SuperCommuter and commute long distances for work, but only occasionally. So I'll live on the West Coast but my office is on the East Coast, so I think in office time. For me, 4am is 7am because that's what time it is for the rest of my team. Occasionally I'll have to set my internal clock to Guam Time or Amsterdam Time for a couple weeks at a time until a project is done, and it makes it much easier when I fly out there because my brain is already on that rhythm.
How often do you have to make that insane commute?
Completely depends on the project. For general, everyday work, I'll go out for a day or two once every two or three weeks. For something that needs more detail or collaboration, I'll go out for a week and then not go back for a month or five weeks. If I'm working on a project outside of my normal office (I mentioned Guam and Amsterdam, but I've had projects elsewhere, too), I'll work from home while I can and then travel there for two to three weeks and during that time I wouldn't travel to my actual office for months.
Indiana has stopped that thankfully. Several counties near Chicago (northwest IN) and near Evansville (southwest IN) are on central time and the rest of the state is eastern time, but everyone changes for daylight saving time now.
I don’t commute across time zones, but where I live is very rural and most things I need to travel east to nearest city almost 2 hours away. I may get better at it if I did it daily, but it is awful. I find it easiest to just add an hour to my travel time, but I also back myself up with entering a calendar event in my phone and setting the time zone. That being said, lots of people miss flights and other appointments. My wife missed my son’s dental appointment just last week
It freaked me out for a second when the link opened in the Google Maps app instead of Firefox like usual. This is neat.
Edit: These time zone lines are now a permanent addition to my Maps app. Not complaining but this is some freaky shit. Simply clicking on a link can make a permanent change apparently, and it's surprising that malicious actors are not taking advantage of this.
My commute used to involve a 10 hour flight (every 5th week). That's how I started preferring night shift.