ST JOHN’S – The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador this week announced that after adjustments for inflation, Newfoundland’s time zone will be shifted to 45 minutes past the hour.
Premier Andrew Furey stunned the province with the surprise announcement, plunging businesses, schools and public services into scheduling chaos.
The new time zone comes in the wake of the annual transition to Daylight Savings Time, compounding disruption across the province, and ordinary citizens have been demanding answers.
“It’s a simple matter of economics,” stated government spokesperson Cheryl Flynn at a press conference held at an undetermined time between 1:30pm and 2:45pm today, according to everyone present, who could not agree on what time it actually was.
“It used to take 25 minutes to drive to the store and pick up groceries, but what with traffic, the weather, and the backlog at the Timmies on Water Street, these days it takes more like 40 minutes. If we want to stay competitive with the rest of Canada, we have to move everything by 15 minutes. That’s the only practical solution.”
Since the policy rollout, public feedback has been mixed. “Listen, I’m thrilled the banks will be open longer, but they could have given us some heads up at least.” says Signal Hill resident Jill Murphy.
“I didn’t know what was happening when I watched my phone go from 2:30am to 1:45am this morning,” adds neighbour Carly Mercer. “But I’m so excited to finally be able to catch the start of Jeopardy! I don’t get home from work until 7:15 usually, but with everything moving fifteen minutes later I think I’ll make it.”
“I’ve been an hour and a quarter late for everything today but I didn’t even notice till you pointed it out cause everybody else was too,” observes Jared Fitzpatrick of Kenmount East. “But if it means I get to order a breakfast sandwich till twelve fifteen, then I’m all in.”
Southside area resident Rod McLaughlin summed up public sentiment on the issue, saying “this whole time change rollout went worse than when we all went to Bobby Noseworthy’s birthday ‘do last winter and Syd Puddester bet him he couldn’t lick the metal part of his fishing boat without getting his tongue stuck and falling off the dock. Long story short, we had to wake up Big Dave Butler in the middle of the night and have him pick Bobby up and defrost him back at the house. Let’s just say you only make that mistake once or twice…”
In response to the changes, the entire region of Labrador collectively sighed, and issued a statement saying “What the hell… You people know that’s not how time works, right?”
The provincial government has since made several other inflation related adjustments, announcing that under the same guidelines, it snowed 35 cm yesterday instead of 20, and province wide, your nan is now five years older than previously believed.
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