living on the border of 2 time zones - questions

[CloudBee]

What's it like? I've always lived in coastal towns on the East Coast, about as far from another time zone as you can get. Unless we're flying somewhere, I never find myself crossing time zones.

Say you live in time the ETZ and work, go to school, or have doctors in the CTZ. If you live on the border of two zones, when times are referenced for appointments and such, it must be the norm for the specific zone to be mentioned, right?

What happens when school soccer teams play towns in different zones?

What if you're meeting friends for dinner. You live in a town in the ETZ and they live in the CTZ. Whose time do you go by when getting together?

Mass transit. There must be some metro areas that have buses / trains and daily commuters crossing time zones twice a day. You must just be used to the conversion when looking at schedule time tables?

Sunday night thoughts.

[thatgirl2478]

My DH lived in a town that was split by the state line. It's complicated. They never changed their clocks. So like today when everyone else set their clocks forward, they would match Central Time. In the fall when everyone sets their clocks back they would match Eastern Time.

So most people in town had 2 clocks - one to Indiana time & one to Ohio time since so many people worked in one state and lived in the other.

They didn't have mass transit, so that wasn't a problem. As for games it was either noted 7 'Indiana time' or 7 'Ohio time', or it was pretty well understood that if you were meeting in OH you were on OH time.

[CloudBee]

Mar 13, 2016 20:00:21 GMT -5 thatgirl2478 said:

My DH lived in a town that was split by the state line.

This blows my mind. How can a single municipality reside in two states?

[isabel]

I haven't done this, but I would imagine the time zone is just always referenced in conversation. Like, we're meeting at 8 central.

Denver has two area codes and there are tons of transplants from other cities, so there is no assumption that any one area code is the norm. People always, always give their area code when saying their phone number. Even businesses.

So, I would figure this is kind of like that.

[cabbagecabbage]

Where my dad lives is walkable from the Illinois-Indiana border. Until a few years ago *some* counties in Indiana didn't observe daylight saving time. So half the year, it would be an hour off one town over. It was a bit weird.

It's very suburban and while everyone goes between states for school, work, and always to Indiana for cheaper gas etc. There isn't public transit really in the area.

They passed a law a few years ago though and now all of the counties follow daylight saving.

[penelope]

I'm not on a border but we pass between eastern and central within two hours. Sporting events are always on the home teams time. Most of us change it to our time and function on that for day trips. Weekend trips we function on the time for the town we are in, however "their time" and "our time" are still designated for all plans.

DH flies out of an airport that is in central time and he's able to just know when he needs to leave. I have to sit down and say, if your flight is at 6, that means it's 7 here so....?

We don't deal with school or work issues, thankfully.

[thedutchgirl]

I live in CT, but I work nationally with clients and colleagues in all time zones. We just always specify the time zone in email to set up a call or meeting. And Outlook helpfully adjusts. So I'll propose a meeting at 10 CST (or now CDT), and send an invite. For folks on the east coast who accept, Outlook correctly places it at 11.

[papie]

Mar 13, 2016 20:05:04 GMT -5 CloudBee said:

Mar 13, 2016 20:00:21 GMT -5 thatgirl2478 said:

My DH lived in a town that was split by the state line.

This blows my mind. How can a single municipality reside in two states?

There's a town in Vermont that is split between the US and Canada.  They even built a library on the line.  

[CloudBee]

Mar 13, 2016 20:26:06 GMT -5 thedutchgirl said:

I live in CT, but I work nationally with clients and colleagues in all time zones. We just always specify the time zone in email to set up a call or meeting. And Outlook helpfully adjusts. So I'll propose a meeting at 10 CST (or now CDT), and send an invite. For folks on the east coast who accept, Outlook correctly places it at 11.

This was me (down to the state) before I stopped working in Oct. The logistics of going through daily life living on the line seems a little more complicated because most people don't schedule personal appointments in Outlook. I went back to a bound day planner the day I left my firm. Ha!

[thatgirl2478]

Mar 13, 2016 20:05:04 GMT -5 CloudBee said:

Mar 13, 2016 20:00:21 GMT -5 thatgirl2478 said:

My DH lived in a town that was split by the state line.

This blows my mind. How can a single municipality reside in two states?

LOL - look up 'Union City Indiana/Ohio' - they had one post office, 2 mayors, 2 fire departments, 2 police departments, separate school systems - so for the most part they were separate but it was one 'town'. It's crazy.

[sapphireblue]

A good friend of mine had this. I think it was when he was living in Indiana. He worked somewhere that was a different time. He said that he had multiple clocks and that it was confusing!

[madringal]

We are in Indiana and are on CST, but live about 40 minutes away from EST. For about 10 years, DH worked in the different time zone. It was not fun for him. Confirming which time zone certain events are in is pretty common. When cell phones started switching automatically for the time zones made things a little easier. Also, until about 8-10 years ago most of Indiana didn't observe DST. So rather then change times, they changed time zones. It was exhausting to keep up with.

[circa1978]

Our vacation house is on a border. It's technically in CT but our phones tend to hop back and forth to ET. We frequently make plans in the ET zone or with people who live there and we're just specific about which. We keep our manually set clocks on the "right" time and it works out. And when it doesn't, we're on vacation and don't really care that much anyway.

[thedutchgirl]

Mar 13, 2016 20:36:27 GMT -5 CloudBee said:

Mar 13, 2016 20:26:06 GMT -5 thedutchgirl said:

I live in CT, but I work nationally with clients and colleagues in all time zones. We just always specify the time zone in email to set up a call or meeting. And Outlook helpfully adjusts. So I'll propose a meeting at 10 CST (or now CDT), and send an invite. For folks on the east coast who accept, Outlook correctly places it at 11.

This was me (down to the state) before I stopped working in Oct. The logistics of going through daily life living on the line seems a little more complicated because most people don't schedule personal appointments in Outlook. I went back to a bound day planner the day I left my firm. Ha!

I meant Central Time. But I do agree that life without Outlook does make scheduling a bit more old school. 

[olive]

Lloydminister on the Alberta/Saskatchewan border is divided in some crazy ways. The city is divided by 50th ave. everything to the east is in sask and everything to the west is Alberta. They have separate area codes for land lines depending which side you're on.
Super confusing is the fact that sask doesn't follow DST but Alberta does. The city has mandated that they follow DST so all of the city is on Alberta time. They also are served by the Sask provincial health system and follow the sask education system even if you're on the Alberta side. It's crazy.

[missmaddie]

Mar 13, 2016 20:08:17 GMT -5 cabbagecabbage said:

Where my dad lives is walkable from the Illinois-Indiana border. Until a few years ago *some* counties in Indiana didn't observe daylight saving time. So half the year, it would be an hour off one town over. It was a bit weird.

It's very suburban and while everyone goes between states for school, work, and always to Indiana for cheaper gas etc. There isn't public transit really in the area.

They passed a law a few years ago though and now all of the counties follow daylight saving.

We rented a cottage in Michigan this summer, right on the border of Indiana. When we were on the main floor our cells said one thing, and then we would walk upstairs and our cell clocks would adjust an hour. I was never certain what the time "really" was.

[glitzyglow]

I grew up near the Eastern and Central time zone. If we played a school in ET, we accommodated their schedule/time zone and our team would leave school early to get there, although sometimes the ET schools would schedule games a little later than normal so the CT schools wouldn't have to miss too much school. When ET came to us, there wasn't any need to adjust since they actually had time to kill before leaving their school.

If you have dinner plans with friends in an the other time zone, you normally just double check whose time, but mostly it was dictated by what time zone the restaurant was in.

We had/have no mass transit.

I think the hardest part about it is just how weird it sounds. For example, my boss worked in central time but lived in Eastern time. He left for work at 7:45am and arrived at work at 7:00am. He left work at 3:30pm and arrived home at 4:45pm.

My old job was on the time zone line and people would rush in to tour my historic site and they were pleasantly surprised to learn that they changed time zones and gained another hour, so they had time to visit.

[RoxMonster]

The concept of time is such a mindfuck to me. Like, depending on where you travel, you might just skip a whole day. Like that day didn't even exist. Or a day could last for 40 hours or something.

On one day of our upcoming vacation, we are traveling two hours east and we change time zones and that is making me grumpy that I will lose an hour in the park lol. I can't imagine living so close to a time zone change.

[Deleted]

Where I grew up we didn't observe DST, the counties to the west observed central time and the counties to the east observed eastern time. So part of the year we were on eastern time and part of the year we were on central time. Many counties were in limbo for a while when the state was going back on and forth on whether to put the whole state on central or eastern time. For a long time I lived in an area that didn't observe DST, worked in the eastern time zone, and went to college in the central time zone. When everything was in limbo some towns refused to observe DST or switched back and forth between whatever time zone they found convenient. There was so much back and forth that businesses in the same town weren't even on the same time. Whenever DST rolled around if have to reconfigure my schedule and figure out who decided to ditch it or observe it.

So, everyone used "fast time" and "slow time". When you made an appointment or a meeting everyone would always tell you whether it was fast time or slow time. Slow time means they were currently observing central time and fast time meant they were observing eastern time. It was easier than explaining time zones to people. The pizza place was on slow time, the pharmacy was on fast time, you just figured it out after a while.

[MixedBerryJam]

Mar 13, 2016 20:27:18 GMT -5 papie said:

Mar 13, 2016 20:05:04 GMT -5 CloudBee said:

This blows my mind. How can a single municipality reside in two states?

There's a town in Vermont that is split between the US and Canada.  They even built a library on the line.  

That's kind of wild. Serious question: Do you have to show a passport to get in? What's to stop a person from entering through the Canada door and walking out the US door? 

[MixedBerryJam]

Mar 13, 2016 22:00:45 GMT -5 RoxMonster said:

The concept of time is such a mindfuck to me. Like, depending on where you travel, you might just skip a whole day. Like that day didn't even exist. Or a day could last for 40 hours or something.

On one day of our upcoming vacation, we are traveling two hours east and we change time zones and that is making me grumpy that I will lose an hour in the park lol. I can't imagine living so close to a time zone change.

My kids got to trick or treat twice one year: we moved west-to-east across the international date line, so we trick or treated, got on a plane, got off the plane and trick or treated again.

[papie]

Mar 14, 2016 5:53:24 GMT -5 MixedBerryJam said:

Mar 13, 2016 20:27:18 GMT -5 papie said:

There's a town in Vermont that is split between the US and Canada.  They even built a library on the line.  

That's kind of wild. Serious question: Do you have to show a passport to get in? What's to stop a person from entering through the Canada door and walking out the US door? 

They were talking about that in the newspaper this weekend. No passport, but there are agents stationed not too far on both sides to ensure people don't cross without passports.

Before the mandatory passports between US and Canada (like mid 2000s?) it was much more free. I remember at the time that those people were not happy with the passport policy.

[Aloe Vera]

This is crazy. I always wondered how people managed the different time zones. I guess you have to get used to it.

[thatgirl2478]

Mar 13, 2016 20:05:06 GMT -5 isabel said:

I haven't done this, but I would imagine the time zone is just always referenced in conversation. Like, we're meeting at 8 central.

Denver has two area codes and there are tons of transplants from other cities, so there is no assumption that any one area code is the norm. People always, always give their area code when saying their phone number. Even businesses.

So, I would figure this is kind of like that.

OMG this has been the biggest adjustment moving from the Chicago area to Central IL.

Chicago has like 5 or 6 area codes AND a separate cell phone area code.  If you want to call ANYWHERE you have to use the area code (even across the street or next door w/in the same area code).  So we went from always using 847 + phone  # or 224 + phone number to the land where there are apparently unlimited phone number combinations because there's a HUGE swath of area that uses 309 here.  In fact it's so widely used (even for cell phones) that 95% of businesses just assume & pre fill the area code field with 309.  So every where we go that we have to give our phone number we have to specify 'Area code 224 phone #' and most of the time they have to have us repeat it a few times because they have to go back and delete 309.  It's fucking annoying.

[thatgirl2478]

Mar 14, 2016 9:21:27 GMT -5 @rainbowdash said:

Mar 14, 2016 9:12:46 GMT -5 thatgirl2478 said:

OMG this has been the biggest adjustment moving from the Chicago area to Central IL.

Chicago has like 5 or 6 area codes AND a separate cell phone area code.  If you want to call ANYWHERE you have to use the area code (even across the street or next door w/in the same area code).  So we went from always using 847 + phone  # or 224 + phone number to the land where there are apparently unlimited phone number combinations because there's a HUGE swath of area that uses 309 here.  In fact it's so widely used (even for cell phones) that 95% of businesses just assume & pre fill the area code field with 309.  So every where we go that we have to give our phone number we have to specify 'Area code 224 phone #' and most of the time they have to have us repeat it a few times because they have to go back and delete 309.  It's fucking annoying.

It's not that bad, really. The rest of the state is divided easily. 309, 217, 618. I would think it strange to always dial the area code first.

It's only that bad because we've got a different area code, so it always takes at least twice as long to check out because they have to go back and change the area code after they start entering it wrong.

It is annoying to have to dial the area code all the time - but you get used to that!