Mrzzy: Thanks for your insight. After pondering this a bit, I have come to the conclusion, you must be right, it IS an east-coast thing.

Which leads to the incidental observation that while we in the central time zone are going to work at 8 a.m., people in the eastern time zone are going to work simultaneously—except they call it 9 a.m. I suppose there's a historical reason for that. Maybe it has to do with the development of the telegraph or railroads.

Our TV schedules are linked in the same way. What is called 7 o'clock news on the east coast is called 6 o'clock news in the Midwest, but we see it simultaneously. And that solves one problem for me: I used to wonder how people on the east coast could watch, say, Jay Leno (and before that, Johnny Carson, Jack Paar, etc.) until 1 a.m. without being dead tired the next day. Well, naturally, they don't have to be at work until 9!

Now, as to quitting time. It seems east-coasters get off at 5, which is our 4, while we have to work another half-hour. How the hell did THAT custom get established?