Saturday, November 06, 2021

The Saturday Morning Post - Does Anyone Know What Time It Is?


It is time for the seasonal shifting of the clocks, spring forward, fall back.  When I wake up at 6:00 AM the clock will read 5:00 AM, oh the pain.  And only a week after we returned from a week in the Pacific time zone, three hours shifted, now a shift here.  

I will be blunt, I hate "daylight savings time."  When I worked in fields where daylight was deemed important, we worked longer or different hours in the summer, we didn't need to fiddle with the clock, we simply changed our working hours to take advantage of it being daylight earlier in the day, and later in the day.  In my current work, it really does not matter when I work, as long as I get the work done.  That is basically my office time policy, we really expect everyone to be available for scheduled meetings between 10:00 AM and 3:00 PM, and beyond that we really don't care when you work, as long as you get your work done.  

I don't know of anyone who enjoys changing time zones.  People whose employers are stuck on work hours, may appreciate the summer shift allowing more daylight after work, but wouldn't it be easier for the employer to allow flexibility in work hours?  Or for people to work a shorter work day?  

I have never bolted wheels onto cars on an assembly line, my productivity is not based on how many widgets I make per hour and how many hours I work.  Sometimes I can produce more widgets in a day, sometimes fewer, it really does not matter how many hours I work.  Yet most organizations base working hours on widgets per hour, like we were all assembly line workers, or machine operators.  Increasingly in a professional and "service" economy we are not productive on the industrial model, but management and accounting are fixated on that model. 

Before my father went into beekeeping, he was a machinist and toolmaker.  Some years in the offseason from the farm, he would go work in machine shops. He picked up a job one winter with General Motors, finishing parts on a lathe.  He looked up one day, and his supervisor was standing at the end of the machine with a stopwatch in his hand, timing how fast he could finish each part.  The supervisor told him he needed to slow down.  Dad asked why, is there a problem with my quality? (He was a perfectionist, he knew that was not the issue.) The answers was you are working too fast, you will make everyone else look bad.  It was near time for the farm to start up for the summer, Dad finished his day's run of widgets, packed his tools, stopped by the stopwatch-guys desk, and said, mail me my final check, I won't slow down, I won't come back. 

Here is to hoping you adjust to the time shift gracefully.  

 

13 comments:

  1. I DO know what time it is. We changed our clocks last week, so it’s only 5 hours later here right now. I hate the changing of the clocks, too. Just throws everything off for a while.

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    1. And on Sunday are we back to 6 hours?

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  2. I don't mind the changing of the cocks because I look forward to darkness falling in winter--it tells me to hunker down--and longer days in summer--as a kid it meant we could play longer.

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    1. If I could sleep 12 hours in winter, I might enjoy the long dark nights, but it is very rare for my body to allow me to sleep that long.

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    2. So, you don’t mind the changing of the COCKS, Bob? I don’t know if I should be surprised.

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  3. Anonymous11/06/2021

    I said luv, I said pet, I said luv. No, no, no. You have it wrong. You put your clock back by an hour. So to correct your time, you need to now turn your clock forward by two hours. You've been interstate and are confused. Trust my advice.

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    1. I do whatever the little boxes tell me to do, the computers that is

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  4. The older I get, the longer it takes me to adjust to the time change (both spring forward and fall back). Not looking forward to it.

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    1. They say at least one day, more likely two, for every hour of time change.

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  5. Luckily, Arizona does not participate in the annual time switch so nothing will change here. When I consulted in cities like St. Louis, Chicago and San Francisco, it took some getting used to.
    Your story about your dad made me remember when my dad worked in a factory and they blew a whistle when it was time to quit. He didn't stay there either. He started his own business and never looked back.

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  6. Standard Time determined the date which would be recorded for my birth. I was actually born just after midnight on 10/16/195something, DST. However since births have to be recorded in Standard Time, my debut was recorded as just after 11:00 on 10/15. I did not learn this small piece of my history until was past 50.

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