Huh? For me it is, and has been like that for a very long time. I work with various customers throughout the day, and they are in various different timezones. When I'm not working I almost daily interact with family, again different timezone. I am always aware of various timezones.

Is this the norm for those people too, or are you basically the only one they ever talk to where timezone matters?

They do indeed talk to people in other timezones as well. We may have online meetings sometimes, with at least three timezones involved.

I can't see how one would only contact in touch with people in a single timezone, unless one only wants to have contact with people in continental Europe (excluding e.g. Portugal and Finland), or people in a single timezone in the US. Timezones are everywhere. The earth is a sphere, so.. can't be avoided.

If your work involves coordinating across timezones daily, you're part of the small minority cases I was talking about. Offline world is still mostly local, and almost all interactions almost everyone has, online and offline, are local too.

Firstly, that's not a small minority case, and secondly, in my small town there are people from around 100 nations, and they have family and friends from all over. And, as I said, even central Europe has 3 timezones just inside EU. It's not like most people only have contact with their 50 neighbours, and never go anywhere. When I talk with friends, timezones come up reasonably often. It's not something people can walk around and not be aware of.

That's just the online world.

Most people we interact with on this site are likely in a different timezone, for example.