Relocating to Chicago from Connecticut five years ago gave me pause. My unease had less to do with the city than its time zone. Central Time isn’t the nation’s chronometric gold standard. That’s Eastern Time. Befitting the region’s dominance, Eastern Time goes first. It’s awake while you’re still sleeping, always ahead. And in modern work life, where business can be conducted anyplace that has a Wi-Fi connection, your time zone matters more than your physical location. Far-flung people scheduling conference calls don’t ask where you are but when you are. The precise where emerges incidentally, usually during premeeting small talk about the weather.
Steady, reasonable, forgiving—not unlike Chicagoans—Central Time is high noon among the time zones. Central Timers are never forced to skip breakfast or interrupt dinner to make a conference call; that inconvenience falls invariably to the folks in the Eastern and Pacific zones. Chicago is the big city anchoring CT, but it’s not too far from the western edge of ET, which stretches our summer days by a few luxurious minutes.
