Auto vs. Quartz Accuracy...
Perhaps I've been fortunate with my 2 Omegas (-2 seconds per day for the SMP and +1 for the GMT), but I simply can't conceive that anyone could notice the difference between the accuracy of a quartz and automatic watch. I might be able to see it if we were all coordinating immensely important and precisely time-sensitive events, all six billion of us together, all at once, with clocks perfectly synchronized. But, we're not all synchronized! I arrive to my day job when my GMT says 6 o'clock... and I'm already six minutes late. I slip out to eat lunch at McDonalds, and arrive there ten minutes too late for breakfast... they only serve lunch after 10:30am, (nevermind that my Omega says that the time is 10:28). I point this out to my manager and he tells me succinctly, "You should have bought the quartz." So, I order the #3 value meal, which I have to wait 5 minutes for (although breakfast ends at 10:30 and lunch begins at 10:30, somehow there are 15 intervening minutes, during which time stands still, but doesn't (still following me, here?). I leave McDonalds with my value meal and chocolate milkshake, and swing past Starbuck's Coffee on the way back to the office -- according to my Omega, six minutes elapse from the time that I leave McDonalds until my arrival at Starbucks, but based on their two clocks (probably due to the time-contracting effects of Einstein's theory of special relativity, as it applies to my speedy driving, further proof of my wife's statements that I drive faster than the speed of light) I have traveled back in time by two whole minutes! No matter, they'll need the extra time to brew my coffee (and that of the three people in front of me) one excruciating cup of coffee at a time. How does this business model work? But, the three customers in front of me all had dredlocks and smelled of pitchuli oil, so one must figure that they don't own watches, and thus can't tell how long they've been standing in line, except by the Starbuck's clock, which must run slower due to some mysterious temporal distorsion (perhaps it's just because of the weed, of which those three hippies were vainly attempting to mask the smell). But, I digress. I arrive back to work (on time, since I've already established that the time clock runs fast) and sit down at my workstation (the system clock of which is about 7 minutes slower than the one in the time clock (a bit of psychology here, a fast time clock gets employees in to work early, and slow clocks in the desktop computers trick them into staying late... coincidence? I think not). I leave work (late) and go to my second job, where the computers run 18 minutes slower than the 3-minute slow clock on the wall, for a net slowness of 21 minutes; This would be no problem at all, except that my second job is pizza delivery. So, I proceed with my deliveries, and find that at every home that I stop at, the customer notices the time stamped on their receipt (generated by the 20-minute-slow computers), then glance at their 10-minute fast wrist watches (which they automatically and subconsciously have learned to adjust, thus defeating the purpose of setting one's watch fast)... and believe that their pizza has taken 40 minutes longer than it actually did to deliver (plus the subjective 'time' that passes more slowly when one is hungry and waiting for a pizza). As I drive home, my dashboard clock in my car is still set to daylight savings time (one hour fast), but I don't know how to reset it, and as I crawl into bed with my wife, I notice that the VCR is blinking 12:00, which I know is nowhere near the accurate time. Get it? Whether I had been wearing a mechanical, quartz, atomic clock or sundial, my day would have gone about the same. Who on earth can quibble about SECONDS per day? HELLO?
