Why we should all use military time

I just had a incident at work were I was supposed to joining a conference call for a maintenance window for a customer. I jumped on the bridge call at 8 PM Mountain time and waited for a 1/2 hour but nobody came into the call with me. Thought that it was strange, checked the case notes for the time and confirmed the time. I then sent a customer an email letting me know that I attended the bridge call but nobody was there.

Today I got an email letting me know that the conference call was for 8 AM Mountain time.... Oh hell did I feel bad, I went and checked the case notes and sure enough were I swore I read 8 PM was 8 AM... I then sent a email to the customer apologizing for the miscommunication. I was let know that the maintenance window went well and without issue and everything was alright.

For reasons like this, my own inability to read AM or PM, it would be so nice to be on military time

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Comments

snadam

Aldur wrote:

I just had a incident at work were I was supposed to joining a conference call for a maintenance window for a customer. I jumped on the bridge call at 8 PM Mountain time and waited for a 1/2 hour but nobody came into the call with me. Thought that it was strange, checked the case notes for the time and confirmed the time. I then sent a customer an email letting me know that I attended the bridge call but nobody was there.

Today I got an email letting me know that the conference call was for 8 AM Mountain time.... Oh hell did I feel bad, I went and checked the case notes and sure enough were I swore I read 8 PM was 8 AM... I then sent a email to the customer apologizing for the miscommunication. I was let know that the maintenance window went well and without issue and everything was alright.

For reasons like this, my own inability to read AM or PM, it would be so nice to be on military time

I think for business purposes, military time is essential. I use it at work when I can for anything that needs to be documented time-wise.

HeroPsycho

You're just saying that because you carry a military clock in that hat of yours.

JDMurray

We should all be using military and GMT. Those HAM radio operators had it right all this time!

Aldur

JDMurray wrote:

We should all be using military and GMT. Those HAM radio operators had it right all this time!

I agree with you wisdom

snadam

HeroPsycho wrote:

You're just saying that because you carry a military clock in that hat of yours.

amongst other things, yes

Lee H

Daft question i know, but is that actually you in the picture

Schluep

I will say that all IT personnel here use the 24 hour clock for everything, including e-mail exchanges with customers. If communicating with a customer we do use their time zone and internally we use the local time (EDT). Obviously everything time based on our mainframes require the 24 hour clock and we obtain store work hours for clients electronically in this format since we transmit data different based upon their work hours.

I know a few people here though that see consistently take 1500 to be 5:00 p.m. instead of 3:00 p.m. however and don't do it with any other times. I still haven't figured out why that is the case. I have learned never to schedule anything for 1500.

Plantwiz

JDMurray wrote:

We should all be using military and GMT. Those HAM radio operators had it right all this time!

I've used a 24 hour clock since...way back in elementary school. Once I became familiar with Zulu...I prefer that, it's a shame it just doesn't catch on. At least a 24 hour clock isn't too hard for most people.

sprkymrk

snadam wrote:

HeroPsycho wrote:

You're just saying that because you carry a military clock in that hat of yours.

amongst other things, yes

I think he sneaks his wife into movie theaters that way too, along with a jumbo bag of popcorn and a 2 liter of coke. :P

snadam

Lee H wrote:

Daft question i know, but is that actually you in the picture

Nope, that would be Jim Carrey from 'Dumb and Dumber'.

sprkymrk wrote:

I think he sneaks his wife into movie theaters that way too, along with a jumbo bag of popcorn and a 2 liter of coke.

When you get a paycut, you find really creative ways to save money

lets not forget the donuts for my fav Mod either!!!

whistler

THe first place I worked IT or in those days DP used military time. But military time with a 8 AM zero hour since that was how they tracked billing. So 8 AM was 00:00. Now that was fun.

Tyrant1919

need to get me one of these:

binarysoul

Sorry, but I don't know what do you mean by "military time".

Does it simply mean time used by military or is it a special term?

dynamik

binarysoul wrote:

Sorry, but I don't know what do you mean by "military time".

Does it simply mean time used by military or is it a special term?

Just using 0-23 instead of 1-12am and 1-12pm, just like the image Tyrant posted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-hour_clock

whistler

binarysoul wrote:

Sorry, but I don't know what do you mean by "military time".

Does it simply mean time used by military or is it a special term?

Military time is defined, in most instances( except for the strange company I worked for), as beginning at Midnight the time is counted from 00:00:00 to 23:59:59 instead of 12:00:00 AM to 12:00:00 PM to 12:00:00 AM. In othe words 1 PM in Military time is 13:00 hours.

http://usmilitary.about.com/od/theorderlyroom/a/militarytime.htm

Aldur

Nice! Tyrant that would be a sweet clock to have.

Sie

Aldur wrote:

I just had a incident at work were I was supposed to joining a conference call for a maintenance window for a customer. I jumped on the bridge call at 8 PM Mountain time and waited for a 1/2 hour but nobody came into the call with me. Thought that it was strange, checked the case notes for the time and confirmed the time. I then sent a customer an email letting me know that I attended the bridge call but nobody was there.

Today I got an email letting me know that the conference call was for 8 AM Mountain time.... Oh hell did I feel bad, I went and checked the case notes and sure enough were I swore I read 8 PM was 8 AM... I then sent a email to the customer apologizing for the miscommunication. I was let know that the maintenance window went well and without issue and everything was alright.

For reasons like this, my own inability to read AM or PM, it would be so nice to be on military time

Doh!!

Have mixed up times before myself a couple of times.

sprkymrk

Mmmmmm... donuts.

Since you said they are for your favorite Mod, I'll ask JD if I can have one.

Or should I ask Mike... wait maybe Plantwiz?

supertechCETma

I started out life as a radioman in the USN. Everything is referenced to Zulu time. Zulu time is Greenwich Mean Time or Coordinated Universal Time. This is the world standard which is mean solar time at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. This location was chosen because by 1884 two-thirds of all charts and maps already used it as their Prime Meridian. In 1929, the term Universal Time (UT) was introduced to refer to GMT with the day starting at midnight. In 1956 the US National Bureau of Standards started to use atomic frequency standards in generating the WWV time signals. They keep racks and racks of Cesium time standards to keep accurate time.

We had to calculate the RF propagation depending on our location. on a funny note... we would use the Russians time tick when floating around the North Atlantic just like they use our time tick when on our side of the world.

Time zones around the world are expressed as positive or negative offsets from UTC.

Military time clears up the whole AM - PM thing. On a submarine, the only way you know if it's morning is if they are serving eggs for chow.

tiersten

supertechCETma wrote:

Zulu time is Greenwich Mean Time or Coordinated Universal Time.

GMT and UTC aren't the same thing. GMT = UT1 but UT1 != UTC. The difference is how the leap seconds are handled. Its only a fraction of a second off though so for general use, UTC is GMT.

supertechCETma

tiersten wrote:

supertechCETma wrote:

Zulu time is Greenwich Mean Time or Coordinated Universal Time.

GMT and UTC aren't the same thing. GMT = UT1 but UT1 != UTC. The difference is how the leap seconds are handled. Its only a fraction of a second off though so for general use, UTC is GMT.

In casual use, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is the same as UTC and UT1. Owing to the ambiguity of whether UTC or UT1 is meant, and because timekeeping laws usually refer to UTC, GMT is avoided in careful writing.

... but who's counting?