Reporters who arrived at the White House with British Prime Minister Theresa May were unable to or delayed in entering the US presidential residence by the Secret Service. The reason? White House officials are seemingly oblivious to the existence of date formats other than the American one.
Secret Service officers were observed dealing with British reporters, upset that their birth dates did not match what had been recorded by security personnel. Members of the British press had their birth dates in the British date format (date-month-year), which puzzled the American officials.
The British format is, in fact, the most common way of writing dates across the world and the American format (month-date-year) is scarcely used with only a couple of other countries employing it.
Buzzfeed UK’s Political Editor, Jim Waterson, tweeted about the hold-up. He later added that the issue was resolved for some after much confusion.
Moments before May's motorcade entered onto White House grounds, members of the British press remained outside the gates, waiting for the Secret Service to tell them they were good to go.
One British journalist, presenting his UK passport, could be seen asking an officer if he was cleared, with the officer telling him that his birthday was still reversed in the system, reported CNN. He had to continue waiting among a handful of others.
Another British reporter detailed his amusing encounter with a White House press officer, highlighting their ignorance.
There is another date format of year-month-date used in countries like China, Japan and Nepal. The American officials’ confusion seems absurd though, as the usage of different date formats in different countries is well-known. Besides which, one would think that when compared against their own records, the inversion of the dates would be easy to figure out.
But that wasn’t all, there was another gaffe by White House officials a little earlier, as they wrote Theresa May’s name without a ‘h’ in a memo, making it ‘Teresa May’, who is, in fact, a British porn star. It was later corrected.
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