In a crowded room full of helpful people, asking the time will produce about five to six different answers. Granted, they'll all be within the span of about five to six minutes from one-another, but they'll still be different.
Why? Probably because most time is fairly nebulous. It's subject to the wielder. Barring time zones, it is about when I'm posting this. Completely indifferent of hour differences, my minute time might be slightly, or even fairly different from yours, or the poster after yours. The reason is that everyone follows more or less the same, but not exact, clock. I've only ever matched times with someone once, and that is because our computers used exactly the same website to keep the time for us.
Other than that, I've yet to be on-the-second with another person. Most times, I'm lucky if I'm within a minute.
Though I digress. Despite this being a very obvious thing, I've been getting chastised for time a lot lately. It's not even pertinent time, like 15+ minutes. It's stuff like two to three minutes. More to the point, I was nearly turned around at the door for a quiz in a major class. To really give a scope to this, this quiz counted for 20% of the total grade. Which meant that if I missed it, I'd have exactly a 80 (Barely a B) if I did absolutely perfectly on every other part of the class (which is approaching impossible given my inability to make 100s on every exam).
After finally being admitted, I sat down, huffed a breath, and looked at my watch. 9:31:02. After getting about fourty seconds of lecture. Which meant I showed up at 9:30:42, or fourty-two seconds "late".
Maybe I'm chronologically inconsiderate, but I think that synchronizing my watch to the Federal Government's Official time clock [http://www.time.gov/timezone.cgi?Central/d/-6/java] is fairly asinine. Especially considering the difference between my personal watch's time (which was synced to my old high school's bell system) and the government's clock is a shocking thirty-nine-point-five seconds.
That's right, I got chastised, and had to sign the roster of tardy students for a difference of thirty-nine seconds.
Chonillogical doesn't seem to grasp the concept of relative time. What may be to me could be just a minute ahead, or two behind, you. Though it matters very little in the long run, because those paltry few minutes matter very little in the long run.
So, I'd have to wonder where everyone stands on this. Is it logical to expect to-the-minute preciseness of everyone's timepiece and promptness, or can a little bit of leeway be given one way or the other in respect to the fact that time is more or less relative?
