Apparently this happens every year. In Germany, during the holiday season, there is a debate about whether or not to allow shopping on Sundays. Merchants want to stay open on Sundays, but tradition dictates that stores stay closed.

We saw (and heard) several versions of this story and typically it was covered as a business story, as if it were just a question of economics. But we’re interested in the larger questions it raises about personal choice in a global, 24/7 economy.

Technology allows you to work, shop, keep in touch with friends and family, and entertain yourself from just about anywhere in the world and at any time of the day or night. As a culture we still talk about work days and weekends and holidays, about being in the office or out of the office, but the lines have gotten blurry. As we noted in a recent post, for some people this is a source of concern, but we see it as an opportunity.

For most, it’s socially unacceptable to answer work e-mails on a holiday. The guy who logs on for a half hour on Christmas is a jerk. What if by answering those e-mails he was able to not go in the next day and therefore get an entire extra day with his family? Is he still a jerk?

What do we lose by all working (or not working) at the same time? What could we gain by having the freedom and the power to work when it’s best for us? And what’s a day off, really, when the world is non-stop?

We were at an undisclosed office supply company the other day when this nifty little number caught our eye. Cool, we thought. Now whenever we have an Important Message someone can write down the contact information and a note detailing what the call was about. How handy!

But wait a minute . . . what if we’re traveling? Then either we have to wait until we come back into the office to see this message, or someone has to take the message and then read it back to us when we call in to check messages.

But wait another minute . . . do we have cell phones with voice mail? Yes! We do! In which case the person calling would have just tried another other number instead and left a message if we were busy.

But then again, it might be nice to have a physical record of their attempt to contact us. Plus that space for the note is awfully nice.

But wait yet another minute . . . do we have access to e-mail anywhere on the planet? Yes! We do! In which case the person trying to contact us could have left a message and then followed up with an e-mail with more details. Who knows? Maybe there was no real need to talk on the phone in the first place. Maybe no one called anyone and we addressed everything electronically.

Hmm . . . maybe this isn’t such a great product after all. Which is too bad, because we like things with the word “important” on them.

Here are two quotes from recent articles on lateness. The first is from a piece in the Toronto Globe and Mail about a movement to make companies recognize that not everyone is a morning person. The second is from a column in the Wall Street Journal about what’s wrong with the perpetually tardy.

“‘A lot of motivational speakers tout this stuff about the early bird getting the worm,’” says [HR consultant Jeanne] Martinson, who wrote the chapter after consulting [Carolyn] Schur’s 1995 book Birds of a Different Feather, which highlighted circadian differences among workers. “They make it seem like being a night owl is a choice. It’s actually biological. It’s like being blue-eyed or brown-eyed. It’s not about choice at all.’”

“‘Most chronically late people consistently underestimate time by 25% to 30%,” says Diana DeLonzor, author of Never Be Late Again. “Late people engage in magical thinking,” she says. “They remember that day 10 years ago when they made it to work in seven minutes flat. That becomes their standard.’”

So which is it?

When someone comes into the office at 8:30 instead of 8:00 is it because of their genes?

Or is it because they’re a pudding head who doesn’t understand that a car trip they made a decade ago might take a little longer today?

Does it matter?

We find it interesting that our conversation about time in the workplace focuses almost entirely on the individual. Whether it’s their genes or magical thinking, being late or early invites judgment. People who are “late” are unmotivated, unfocused, unproductive. People who are “early” are driven, committed, effective.

We’d like to see the conversation change. In a 24/7 global economy, when business is being conducted at all times without regard to time and space, there is no such thing as late or early. The only thing that matters is results. Individual people know this. But for some reason, organizations still cling to their outmoded beliefs about what work looks like, which often means from 8-5 in an office. Companies don’t need to “figure out” late people. They need to start questioning why they even care about “early” or “late” in the first place.