Oakland Time

Every once in a great while I get into work around 8:30, the garage is mostly empty, there's no line at the elevators I have a few quiet moments in the office before anyone arrives. This morning was one of those mornings, but this morning I had a reason to be early, there was a meeting scheduled with a new client for 9:00. The meeting was scheduled by our current client who knows perfectly well that if you schedule something at our office at 9:00 nothing is actually going to get started before 9:15 and probably not until 9:30. This is the sort of thing that used to make me very tense, as I grew up on the East Coast where you get places early and things start on time. But I've gotten used to Pacific Time and it's understood that starting a meeting at 9:00 is a rather fluid concept. Especially if there's coffee and bagels. So imagine my surprise when I got to our office and five people are waiting at the door. After a frigid introduction I showed them into the conference room so they could set up. Amidst the gathering of chairs, coffee setup and computer fiddling our employees trickled in and started the normal morning hubbub. A few of us were talking in my office when our current client representative came in and said the group was impatient to get started it's 9:01. And I looked at her and said you know we don't actually start anything at 9:00. She very sheepishly admitted that yes she did know that but this new client didn't. So we all rather grumpily got started and most of the bagels went uneaten. At lunch a woman from the new client's group said she was surprised that walking over to our office this morning she didn't see anybody on the streets even though this is the downtown business district. Yes I said that's because Oakland starts its day at 9:00 and not a moment sooner!