Time

Excuse a quick rant about people who don’t understand timezones.

This evening I’ve got a telephone interview with someone who will be calling me from the US. The recruitment agent told me to expect the call “at 7:30 pm”. Of course with no explicit timezone mentioned and with her and me both being in the UK I assumed that she meant the current UK timezone (British Summer Time, aka BST – which is GMT +1).

Then this morning, I get an email from her confirming the interview. It says that the interview is at 7:30 pm GMT. Which would be 8:30 pm BST.

Of course I know what she’s done. She’s made a lazy assumption that “GMT” means “the current time in the UK”, but it’s just possible that she’s confirmed the time as 7:30 pm GMT with the person who is calling me and that he’s intelligent enough to know what that really means (as opposed to what she thinks she means) and that I’ll therefore get the phone call an hour later than expected.

I’ve emailed for clarification. Which I expect will just lead to more confusion.