SALT LAKE CITY — Thousands of Utah workers were plunged into seasonal confusion this week after returning from lunch to discover the sun had already set, an event officials attribute to the end of Daylight Saving Time and the sun’s new, earlier schedule of 5:06 p.m., a slot most residents still insist “is basically afternoon.”
“I went out for a sandwich at noon like a person with a life,” said one downtown office worker, blinking at windows that had gone the color of a cave. “I came back and it was night. My body says I should be in pajamas. My calendar says I have a 4:30 status meeting. Both are winning.”
The annual fall-back, which grants Utahns one extra hour in exchange for four months of driving home from work in full darkness, has once again split the state into two camps: those who celebrated the bonus hour of sleep, and those who spent it awake at 2 a.m. watching their phone change the time twice. Early data suggests these are the same people.
Commuters report the deepest disorientation on I-15, where the evening rush now unfolds under headlights, leading many drivers to conclude, independently and incorrectly, that they must have accidentally become night-shift workers. “I left the office and my car thought it was time to lock itself for the night,” said one Lehi commuter. “I respected its decision.”
State lawmakers briefly considered permanent daylight time, as they do every year, before setting the idea aside until spring, when they will briefly consider permanent standard time, in a legislative tradition as reliable as the darkness itself.
At press time, Utahns were standing in their kitchens at 6 p.m., in the dark, asking the question that sustains the state until March: “Is it too early to go to bed? Asking for me.”
Photo via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0