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Why Edinburgh's Clock is Almost Never on Time (bbc.com)
Arrive in Edinburgh on any given day and there are certain things you can guarantee. One of which is, the time on the turret clock atop The Balmoral Hotel is always wrong. By three minutes, to be exact. From a report: While the clock tower's story is legendary in Edinburgh, it remains a riddle for many first-timers. To the untrained eye, the 58m-high landmark is simply part of the grand finale when surveyed from Calton Hill, Edinburgh's go-to city-centre viewpoint. There it sits to the left of the Dugald Stewart Monument, like a giant exclamation mark above the glazed roof of Waverley Train Station. Likewise, the sandstone baronial tower looks equally glorious when eyed from the commanding northern ramparts of Edinburgh Castle while peering out over the battlements. It is placed at the city's very centre of gravity, between the Old Town and the New Town, at the confluence of all business and life. Except, of course, that the dial's big hand and little hand are out of sync with Greenwich Mean Time.
This bold irregularity is, in fact, a historical quirk first introduced in 1902 when the Edwardian-era building opened as the North British Station Hotel. Then, as now, it overlooked the platforms and signal boxes of Waverley Train Station, and just as porters in red jackets met guests off the train, whisking them from the station booking hall to the interconnected reception desk in the hotel's basement, the North British Railway Company owners wanted to make sure their passengers -- and Edinburgh's hurrying public -- wouldn't miss their trains. Given an extra three minutes, they reasoned, these travellers would have more time on the clock to collect their tickets, to reach their corridor carriages and to unload their luggage before the stationmaster's whistle blew. Still today, it is a calculated miscalculation that helps keep the city on time.
This bold irregularity is, in fact, a historical quirk first introduced in 1902 when the Edwardian-era building opened as the North British Station Hotel. Then, as now, it overlooked the platforms and signal boxes of Waverley Train Station, and just as porters in red jackets met guests off the train, whisking them from the station booking hall to the interconnected reception desk in the hotel's basement, the North British Railway Company owners wanted to make sure their passengers -- and Edinburgh's hurrying public -- wouldn't miss their trains. Given an extra three minutes, they reasoned, these travellers would have more time on the clock to collect their tickets, to reach their corridor carriages and to unload their luggage before the stationmaster's whistle blew. Still today, it is a calculated miscalculation that helps keep the city on time.
She was always fashionably late, so I started telling her we had to be somewhere an hour earlier. It's worked for 30 years.
This sad technique also works for PhBs who's style is management by crisis. I once had a boss who had an "unexpected" crisis every couple of weeks - usually the big cheese was coming to review or such. Two week's work had to be done in the next week. Having been warned by previous burned-out victims, my progress report was always at least a week behind as actual productivity didn't seem to matter.
There was much moaning and pissing about impossibilities when his next "unexpected" crisis arose even though the milestone was already in hand. This seemed to please him more than my "somehow" meeting the crisis deadline. It was the most relaxed, and goofing-off work environment I ever had.
Some people I know set their car clocks a few minutes ahead to help them arrive on time.
Our office wall clock was set about 8 minutes out as it takes that long to walk to the building where all the meetings are held. Unfortunately that lead to the inevitable conversation "That clock is 8min fast, we still have time" and then would arrive late anyway.
Lots of past tense in this post since we got a new team member who while on night shift on his first week set the clock to the correct time and screwed us all over. Then he asked why we don't just leave 8min early and it appears it took someone to say it out aloud for everyone to realise how dumb the original idea was.