Man, I totally screwed this one up. If you’ve ever tried scheduling a video call that needs to bridge London and Casablanca, you know the pain. It’s supposed to be simple, right? It’s just one time zone difference, maybe zero, maybe one hour. But when that Daylight Saving Time (DST) switch hits? Forget about it. It’s pure chaos.
The Initial Mess-Up: Why I Had to Check
I was setting up a weekly check-in with a client who lives just outside Rabat. Easy enough. We started in early February. The UK was on GMT, Morocco was on GMT. Zero difference. We locked in 2 PM UK time, 2 PM Morocco time. Perfect, I thought.
Then late March rolled around. We all know the UK pulls the clock forward an hour. They switch to BST (British Summer Time). I thought I was being smart. I figured, “Okay, the UK shifts to GMT+1, so now Morocco must be one hour behind.” So, I went into my meeting scheduler and changed the Moroccan time slot from 2 PM to 1 PM. I patted myself on the back for being so detail-oriented and preemptive.
The call day came. I logged in at 2 PM sharp. Nothing. I waited ten minutes. Called his cell. He answers, confused as heck, saying, “Why are you calling me? Our meeting is in another hour.”
I looked at my local clock. It said 2:15 PM BST. I looked at his local clock on my meeting software. It suddenly said 3:15 PM Morocco Time. Wait. What? The difference went from zero to minus one, and then suddenly jumped to plus one? It drove me nuts. I swore the difference was supposed to be exactly one hour after the UK shifted.
The Practice: Tracking the Clocks Week by Week
I needed a simple, idiot-proof record. I decided I wasn’t trusting Google or those automatic time zone websites anymore. I needed real, physical proof. I decided to track the time difference manually every Sunday morning for six weeks, starting the week before the UK DST change.
What did I actually do? I didn’t trust those official government time sites either. I opened two separate cell phones. One was set to London time, one was set to Rabat time. I put them side by side on my desk and literally just watched them change.
Phase 1: Baseline Measurement (Early March)
This was the easy part, confirming my starting point.
- London Clock: 10:00 AM GMT
- Rabat Clock: 10:00 AM GMT
- Difference: Zero hours.
Phase 2: The UK Shift (Last Sunday in March)
This is the weekend where I had initially messed up the call. The UK jumped forward.
- London Clock: 10:00 AM BST (They jumped from 9 AM to 10 AM)
- Rabat Clock: 9:00 AM GMT (They stayed put)
- Difference: One hour. London is ahead. This is what I expected!
If this was the case, why was my client showing up an hour late according to my 1 PM appointment slot? I realized that while I was tracking the UK switch, I totally ignored the fact that Morocco, historically, often starts their own DST shift, but the real kicker is that they sometimes skip it entirely, OR they push it back to account for religious holidays.
The Moroccan Curveball: When Zero Becomes Two
I started digging into the specifics, not just trusting the general calendar, but checking the actual time displayed on verified Moroccan news sites and government portals every single day after the UK switch. I checked them right when the UK shift happened. Everything matched my Phase 2 tracking. The difference was one hour.
But the next week, the time difference changed again! And this is where the global time zone calculators fail everyone.
The pattern I found was messed up:
Morocco often chooses to stay on GMT permanently, avoiding DST to align with GMT+0. However, they almost always roll their clocks back one hour during the month of Ramadan, regardless of where Europe is at. This is the crucial bit that threw my schedule into the shredder.
The year I tracked this, Ramadan started two weeks after the UK moved to BST. So for those two weeks, the difference was exactly one hour (UK ahead). Then, on the Friday night before Ramadan started, Morocco pulled their clocks back one hour (effectively moving them to GMT-1 temporarily). The UK was still happily cruising on BST (GMT+1).
Suddenly, the time difference exploded.
Phase 3: The Ramadan Shift (Mid-April)
- London Clock: 10:00 AM BST (GMT+1)
- Rabat Clock: 8:00 AM (Temporarily GMT-1)
- Difference: Two full hours!
That meant my 2 PM London call became 12 PM in Rabat. I had scheduled for 1 PM, thinking the difference was one hour, but it had ballooned to two. No wonder the poor guy was an hour late! I had mistakenly assumed a one-hour difference when the actual lag was two hours. My simple math failed because I didn’t account for the local decision.
The Final Tally: My New Personal Rule
My simple practice session proved one thing: You can’t just rely on the European DST schedule when dealing with North Africa, especially Morocco. Their internal religious and state decisions override the global standard, making the time difference an absolute moving target that can bounce between 0, 1, and 2 hours within a month.
My new rule is simple, and it has worked perfectly since:
Never assume the difference is stable between the UK and Morocco during Spring.
I instituted a triple check system:
- Check the UK DST status (GMT or BST).
- Check the current calendar for Ramadan start/end dates.
- Check a verified Moroccan local source for their official, often last-minute, time change announcement regarding the Ramadan shift.
It sounds like overkill, but it saved my butt. What started as me trying to be clever and failing resulted in a solid practice record that keeps my international scheduling sane. You gotta track the specific date, or you’re going to miss that critical call, just like I did.