Time Zone Ombudsman Orders Neighboring Counties to Stop ‘Looking at Each Other’s Clocks’

Time Zone Ombudsman Harold Finch issued a binding directive Tuesday ordering three neighboring counties to ‘stop looking at each other’s clocks,’ ending a month-long dispute over whose 5 p.m. darkness ‘counts more.’

‘County A has been pointing at County B’s clocks and saying, ‘See? They’re an hour ahead of the darkness,” Finch said, reading from Directive TZ-44. ‘County B has been responding by pointing at its own clocks and saying nothing, which is somehow worse.’

The dispute began when residents of the westernmost county noticed their sunsets occurring ‘a full 11 minutes later’ than those of their eastern neighbors, a fact they celebrated with a parade, a banner reading ’11 MORE MINUTES OF SUN,’ and what Finch called ‘an insufferable attitude.’

‘Eleven minutes,’ said western county resident Dale Pruitt. ‘That’s eleven more minutes of daylight, every day, until March. We earned those minutes. We will be mentioning them at every opportunity.’

Finch’s directive prohibits ‘clock-looking, clock-comparing, and clock-bragging’ across county lines through March, and establishes a ‘neutral temporal observation zone’ at the county fairgrounds, where all clocks have been covered with burlap.

‘Time is a shared resource,’ Finch said. ‘Like the parking lot at the fairgrounds. Stop fighting over it.’