you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 49 points 2 years ago (8 children)

I work with Americans and this hits home hard. It's especially infuriating when they format their dates. "I had a meeting with so-and-so on 4/5" and nobody has any fucking clue what they mean.

The worst part is how hopelessly oblivious they are about it. It's not even like they don't care that nobody does things their stupid way - it's the fact that they're so insulated that they can't even fathom that nobody does things the same way they do. It just goes to show how clueless they are about the rest of the world and how little they get out of their neighborhoods.

It drives me mad. At this point, it's just offensive how ignorant they can be sometimes. If you have to work with other people, you should at least make an effort to be aware of the fact that others do things a different way and try to avoid situations like this, but they just refuse to do so.

Apologies... /rant

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 16 child comments
  • [–] 20 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I'm American and always use 30 Dec 2023 as my date scheme. It makes much more sense. I also work in a multicultural laboratory, so there should be no question as to what date it is, but some of my colleagues still use mm-dd-yy.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    some of my colleagues still use mm-dd-yy.

    That makes it even worse. When the date uses slashes I expect it to be American, but with dashes anything other than yyyy-mm-dd doesn't even read as a date to me

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • Thanks, I appreciate it! I also try to use the name of the month instead of the number as frequently as possible. To be honest, it's not really the order of the fields that matters - format it whichever way makes you happy! Just make sure it's not ambiguous so other people can tell what you mean. And be aware that not everyone interprets things the same way you do

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Like the American below, I generally use 30-December 2023 partly because I work with an international company but mostly because after the century rolled over and we had years that looked like months I got confused.

    Had a boss that formatted all dates as YYYY-MM-DD because that makes them sort correctly in lists.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • I work in an international company too! And yet, this confusion persists :-/

    I also format everything YYYY-MM-DD for my personal use too. When writing prose, usually some other format is just fine, but I really would love if everyone did year-month-day

  • source
  • parent
  • [+] -6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I insist on YYYY-MM-DD because it allows me to use "MM-DD" for short and piss off the euros

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Besides the dates, I also still don't know if 12am is noon or midnight. Do Americans know? Is there a problem with simply counting to 24?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago* (4 children)

    12:00AM is midnight because AM is morning, and it's the beginning of the morning.

    Using 12-hour time is just a historical artifact from all our analog clocks having 12 hours on their face and not wanting to have to add 12 to the number on the clock for half the day.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Where I'm from, 12:00 a.m. (00:00) is the middle of the night (we call it midnight here), and morning begins when the sun rises (and we say "good morning" during our mornings).

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    Put more specifically, A.M. and P.M. are abbreviations for "ante meridiem" and "post meridiem", which are Latin for "before mid-day" and "after mid-day" respectively. Since a new day begins at midnight, it follows that midnight is 12:00 A.M. since it's the 12 o'clock that is before mid-day.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    12:00AM is midnight because AM is morning, and it's the beginning of the morning.

    That doesn’t make it less confusing, it’s the beginnng of the morning but uses the highest available number.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    12AM is midnight. As for the other part I have this mind blowing concept for you, our culture is not the same as yours. We have our own ways of doing things, just like you.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Why should anyone cut time in two zones? How does it help or benefit anyone? If anything, it only serves to add extra confusion. In the era of electronic time keeping, there is a wonderful opportunity to ditch an extremely stupid decision that was proliferated by analog clocks.

    We have 24 hours in a day, just count them one by one. Boom. Problem solved. No confusion, no complications, no nothing.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] -2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Because unless you live underground, are blind, or live so far north or south that the day night cycle loses cohesion it's literally as easy as "Can I see daylight?" If you really want to fix it round hours out to 20-30 for easier conversion between days and smaller units, 7 day weeks? That's backwards and hard to convert mentally, make them 10 days. Months are just tied to the lunar cycle we can do better surely. Years are stuck though unless we speed up or slow the Earth's orbit. While we are at it, one time zone, if everyone is on identical clocks it'll save so many issues, I don't want to know when 21:00 is in Hong Kong, I'll just call at Universal 11:00

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Sure, there's a lot wrong about the way we work with time and date. Months are not even tied to lunar cycles, we have around 13 of them in a year.

    But conversion from 12 to 24 hour format is already there and easy to switch to without losing anything. Let's start going rational.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (3 children)

    PM is evening, AM is morning.

    I prefer 24hr time but 12hr is not confusing

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Where I'm from, 12:00 a.m. (00:00) is the middle of the night (we call it midnight here), and morning begins when the sun rises (and we say "good morning" during our mornings).

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    So if you worked at a hotel or airport or a coffee shop or something and you saw someone shortly before sunrise you would say "Good night" not "Good morning"?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    Not all languages work the same way as English does. You shouldn't think in English terms in this case. His language may use hello as a rule in these situations or have a completely different word without equivalent in English.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    The notations can be confusing, especially around noon and midnight. Is midnight am or pm when it's equally distant to both the previous and the next noon? Why does 12am not follow 11am???

    Where I live we use 12hr time in casual spoken language but pretty much always specify the time of day as well, like eight in the evening or twelve at midnight. But for anything written or even remotely formal, 24h time is used for obvious reasons.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Agreed. I've never understood the logic of splitting the hours of the day in half. 1800 is so much nicer than 6PM.

    I don't think that's purely an American thing though. If I had to guess, I'd say that most of the world uses 12-hour clocks instead of 24-hours. I could be wrong though. Nevertheless, I usually write all times in 24-hour format. But it always sounds awkward trying to use it in speech. I haven't figured out a good way to do that yet.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    In my country it's normal to pronounce time in either format, and it doesn't make any confusion.

    Also we don't use AM or PM when using 12-hour format: we say night/morning/day/evening. Like "3 in the day" means 3PM, or 15:00.

    "Fifteen-o-o" works just fine as well.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    In America you'll hear "It's three in the morning" or "It's four in the afternoon."

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    "Three in the morning" is super weird, like, it's not morning, this thing is called night :D

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    If you said "three at night" to an American, I think he'd have to process it for a minute. You'd say it's _ in the morning from like 12:30AM through noon, _ in the afternoon from noon to about 6 or 7, then _ at night/evening from then till midnight.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    heck even inside these borders.. the concept of timezones blows their minds at work lol..

    them: "yeah let's set a meeting at 9am!"

    me: eastern? pacific? central? help me... heeeelllp meee

  • source
  • parent