Whose day
Whose day it is
Five parties, five ideas of which days are working days, and no two of the five-day weeks made of the same five days.
Who is working when, for the people on this page
The client's procurement office, Dubai
Thursday afternoon is their Friday
The port inspector, Santos
Monday is not a working day for him
two parties · three days of the seven are working days for all of them · Tue, Wed, Thu
Two of the parties these nine notes are about. Neither week was asked about in advance, and both were discovered by something failing to arrive.
The Week You Can Change and the Week You Cannot
Most advice about time zones assumes you can change how people work. With clients and suppliers you cannot, and the remaining moves are different ones.
Asking Which Days Somebody Works
Two questions asked at the start of a relationship remove most of the surprise from every date agreed afterwards, and almost nobody asks them.
The Friday and Saturday Weekend
A week running Sunday to Thursday is not a shortened week. It overlaps yours by four days, and the two it misses are the two you most often use.
Public Holidays You Have Never Heard Of
A holiday in a country you do not operate in removes days from a window you have already promised, and it is the most predictable disruption here.
The Six-Day Week on the Other Side
A supplier who works Saturday has given you a day you do not use, because nothing is ever sent from here to arrive on it.
Counting Working Days On Two Calendars
A period expressed in working days has a different length for each party, and the difference is largest exactly where the stakes are highest.
The Closure That Is Not a Public Holiday
Audit weeks, plant shutdowns, stocktakes and sales conferences close an organisation as thoroughly as a national holiday and appear on no list you can look up.
The One Person Who Signs
An organisation's working week is not the week of the person you actually need, and the gap between the two is where most of the waiting happens.
Writing the Other Side's Week Down, Once
The answer to a question about somebody else's calendar is learned repeatedly by different people unless it is written somewhere a stranger would look.