Time zones have always been a thinker’s game to me. I still do not really get Greenwich time or how time measurement is really all made up. I do know the birds and squirrels in my backyard get up and start foraging for food at the same time every day all year long without benefit of the clock, calendar, or whether to fall back or spring forward.
Time litters our language big time. We mark it, buy it, kill it, make it, tell it, and do it. There is downtime, hard time, bad time, big time, and high time. We worry about a nick of time, a stitch of time, and my how time flies. We want to buy time so we have more spare time. We avoid crunch time so we have time on our hands and more time off.
But the best part about time is how we respect it. When I need to call a client in Jakarta I always Google what time it is in Indonesia (12 hours ahead of EST) so I am not waking my client in the middle of the night. I am always careful to specify time zone when setting up a meeting—” your time or mine?” We make decisions in our professional relationships based on start time, lunchtime, and quitting time. What if we were as careful about all our customers’ particulars as were about their time zone?