Hundreds and possibly thousands of Mexicans reportedly woke up late for work today because the alarm clocks on their cellphones were delayed due to a software update error.
The glitch automatically changed the hour on some phones in the central time zone to that of Tijuana, which is two hours behind. Consequently, many people got an unexpectedly late start to their day.
Many people took to social media to blame and mock AT&T’s Mexico subsidiary for making them late to work.
De por sí me cuesta un huevo despertarme y luego hacen estas mamadas. Esto no se lo va a creer mi jefe. #attmx
— OliverFabris (@OliverFabris) May 12, 2016
“I already have a hard time waking up and then you come up with this crap. My boss is not going to buy this.”
Others joked that their phone wasn't affected by the glitch and they missed the chance to sleep-in.
“I have AT&T Mexico and didn’t have any time zone change. Thank you AT&T for taking away my opportunity to arrive late at work.”
Other people just couldn't figure out what was going on.
“When your cellphone says 5 am but outside there’s light like its 7 am.”
AT&T acknowledged the error but would not comment on how many devices were affected.
“This morning, as a result of a software update, some of our users may have seen the wrong time displayed on their devices. The failure was experienced in multiple regions throughout Mexico, mainly with LTE enabled high-end devices. Voice and data services were not affected. By 08:05 AM, timestamps were reset to the correct time,” AT&T told Fusion in an email.
Although the cellphone glitch was mostly a funny inconvenience, it’s also a powerful reminder of how dependent everyone has become on technology on a daily basis.
Hey, maybe a couple more of these incidents will put sundials back in vogue.