Americans living in the Central Time Zone may have a harder time than their Eastern and Pacific counterparts.
Locals who stick to Central Time (always an hour late for East Coast meetings) live in 20 different states and major metropolises like Chicago and Houston.
Even though the central time zone has major cities and a large population, writer Ian Bogost says that central times “always run a little early and a lot late.”
People who live in Central Time are always trying to catch up with those on the East Coast who set “the pace of the nation.” The trading hours of the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq are dictated by East Coast time.
At the same time, Central Time is two hours ahead of West Coasters, who have solidly assumed their role as laid-back people in American society.
In an article published in The AtlanticBogost writes how people with their clocks set to central time essentially have an identity crisis and suffer constant whiplash trying to supply the East Coast and the West Coast with business and work.
St. Louis, Missouri, where Bogost is headquartered, is a major city in the Central Time Zone.
Chicago is the largest US city operating on prime time with a population of just over 2.6 million.
A panoramic photo of downtown Houston, another large American city that operates on prime time.
As he says, “No one needs to visit you in Tulsa or Little Rock to arrange a call or set a deadline… This creates a special and deep discomfort.”
And at a time when American businesses are relying more than ever on Zoom calls after the pandemic popularized remote work, scheduling issues have likely become even more pronounced for people in prime time.
Bogost, who said he lives in St. Louis, Missouri, wrote that the mountain time zone shares the “temporal confusion” of Central Time, but notes that most states there (Wyoming, Montana and New Mexico) are so sparsely towns that is Not a big problem.
Besides, he adds, mountain time at least gets a name that raises thoughts of clear, thin air and “rugged individualism.” Central Time isn’t even a cool name, but rather “mediocre,” according to Bogost.
Of course, there’s a reason the United States has the time zones it does, and it’s not to limit itself to people who are an hour behind New York City, where Wall Street is, or Washington, DC, where Find our capital.
New York City (pictured in midtown Manhattan) is still considered the financial center of the United States, boasting Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange.
Pictured is a tram in San Francisco.
The skyline of the city of Little Rock, Arkansas, photographed from the Arkansas River
The contiguous United States, which excludes Alaska and Hawaii, has had four time zones since 1883: Eastern, Central, Mountainous, and Pacific.
It was then that the American railroad companies, which at the time were the main means of transporting goods throughout the country, tired of having to navigate over 144 local hours in North America.
The lack of time standardization before 1883 led to train scheduling confusion and even collisions, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
As modes of transportation continued to develop, including the advent of air travel, the government began to regulate timekeeping even more strictly.
The Department of Transportation was created by Congress in 1966 for this reason. One of its responsibilities, in addition to regulating all forms of transportation in the country, is to ‘regulate, encourage and promote the widespread and uniform adoption and observance of the standardized timetable.’
So if there’s anyone to blame for Bogost’s central time problems, it’s the Department of Transportation.