Huh??

AM or PM?

The other night I was attempting to explain to my son why his alarm went off at midnight.

"That's because it was set for midnight", I explained.
"Nuh-uh!"
(sigh)
"Yes, see it is set for 12 AM"
"But that's not midnight!"
(oh we have AM and PM confused)
"Yes 12 AM is midnight and 12 PM is lunchtime" (that is, of course, if you typically eat at noon like a 7 year old might)
"Huh?!??! No Way"
"Yeah-huh, that's the way it is."

Reluctantly he accepted my explanation and we fixed the alarm so that we don't need to hear "Beep, Beep" at midnight (whether that is AM or PM).

Europe is different?

Today I had a case of "deja vu" with a tech support person from the Netherlands. I was helping him (or he was helping me) schedule a task on a customer's computer and we were discussing when we would like the task to run. I wasn't certain if this client left his computer run all night so I suggested that he set it for noon because he may be out of the office but the computer would most likely be running. To my amusement the cursor changed the time to 12:00 AM.

"Uh, how about we set it for noon."
"Yes that would be 12:00 AM"
"Uh, no, that is midnight"
"No that would be 12:00 PM"
"This is funny, I just had this conversation with my 7 year old" (hopefully he wasn't offended)

By now I am starting to second guess myself, so I quickly muted my phone and ask my co-worker, "Hey, noon is 12 PM, correct?"
"Yes"
Whew!

"Yes, we want to set the time to 12 PM"

By now Mr. Netherlands was starting to see the problem, "Over here we use military time, it's so much easier. Midnight is 00 and noon is 12."
"Ha Ha yeah that would be easier", I laughed.
"And you don't use kilometers, kilos, or liters either. That just blows my mind."
(Oh boy) "Yes we are just crazy Americans."
(mute button, mute button, where is that mute button??)

He was a good sport and we successfully setup the scheduled task to run at noon. I never gave it a thought that Europe doesn't use AM and PM. Guess I learned something new today.

~T