I would like to expand this to cover editing as well. There is currently no way to configure the datepicker controls to return something other than a javascript Date object, which carries the implicit assumption that the user's current timezone is somehow relevant to the date being entered or changed. This is frequently an utterly wrong assumption to make, and the only workaround is messing around with intercepting data going to/from the server to apply or remove the useless timezone offset. 

I'm sorely tempted to simply use a JQuery UI datepicker in an edit-template if I were to build another grid with inline editing of dates, just to gain the ability to treat dates as string values without losing the ability to change them using a calendar control or suffering the pain of dealing with the js Date() madness. 

This seems similar to this idea:
http://kendoui-feedback.telerik.com/forums/127393-telerik-kendo-ui-feedback/suggestions/6653772-grid-timezone

And both should be accommodated if this was implemented:
http://kendoui-feedback.telerik.com/forums/127393-telerik-kendo-ui-feedback/suggestions/11250303-kendo-ui-default-timezone-for-display

All of our time is stored in the database as UTC. We want an easy way to display the time in the grid as UTC instead we have to use onrequestedend and mess with the values.

This is not intuitive. We often don't even care about time element but the grid being in the local timezone causes no end of trouble.

We should be able to set the timezone the grid should use to display the dates.