Substandard

At 4.18 pm Australian Eastern Standard Time, on Thursday 4-4-2013 Mine Host telephones to an office in NSW.

The call is answered by a recorded message:  "Thank you for phoning X-corp, our office hours are 9am to 5pm, Australian Eastern Standard Time, please call back during these hours."

Mine Host checks the time, then tries again.  Same result, time after time.

The following morning, the number is phoned again.  Mine Host is put through to a director of the company (a significant sized operation, they employ more than 200 people, mostly in office work).

Mine Host mentions the surreal event of phoning between 9-5 eastern standard time, and being continuously met with a recording stating the the office closed at 5pm.

Specifically it is pointed out to the director of X-corp that Mine Host was phoning at 4.18pm Queensland time, (the state of Queensland uses Australian Eastern Standard Time - New South Wales vacillates between standard time and daylight saving time).

The X-corp director acts as if Mine Host has hydrophobia or something, patiently explaining that Queensland does not having daylight saving, whereas NSW does, and this is why 4.18pm in Qld is 5.18pm in NSW, thus 4.18pm in Qld is ..... (etc.etc.etc..... y'all've got the picture by now)

Mine Host rather succinctly points out that he is well aware that NSW occassionally switches from Standard Time to "Brokeback Mountain Time", however the matter at hand is that X-corp is answering the phone with a recording that is somewhat embarrassing to X-corp.

.... Yep, these self-centred dickheads believe that whatever time NSW decides to set the clocks to, is Eastern Standard Time.

Such delusion is not an uncommon one in NSW.