diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index d6ecd56..e15089e 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -1,3 +1,7 @@
+## 2.0.2
+
+- Fix bugs with and severely de-cruft Gitlab timestamp parsing
+
 ## 2.0.1
 
 - Fix issue where ASCII-only terminals cannot display progress bars
diff --git a/assigner/backends/gitlab.py b/assigner/backends/gitlab.py
index 81d09b4..f50ea9a 100644
--- a/assigner/backends/gitlab.py
+++ b/assigner/backends/gitlab.py
@@ -381,9 +381,20 @@ def get_last_HEAD_commit(self, ref="master"):
         # Gitlab's commit created_at time uses the git metadata;
         # rather than trusting students, we get the time the commit was pushed at
         if matching_pushes and HEAD['id'] == matching_pushes[0]['push_data']['commit_to']:
-            # For whatever reason, Gitlab uses a different time format here than for commits...
-            unmangled_time = matching_pushes[0]['created_at'][:-1] + "-0000"
-            HEAD['created_at'] = unmangled_time
+            created_at = matching_pushes[0]['created_at']
+
+            if created_at.endswith('Z'): # convert 'Z' to appropriate UTC offset
+                created_at = created_at[:-1] + "-0000"
+            else:
+                # Fix UTC offset format in GitLab's datetime: prior to py3.7, UTC offsets could not contain colons
+                # timezone specifier starts with - or +; look for - first and if that fails then look for +
+                tz_start = created_at.rfind('-')
+                if tz_start == -1:
+                    tz_start = created_at.rfind('+')
+                if tz_start != -1:
+                    created_at = created_at[:tz_start] + created_at[tz_start:].replace(':', '')
+
+            HEAD['created_at'] = created_at
 
         return HEAD
 
diff --git a/assigner/commands/status.py b/assigner/commands/status.py
index a515dc4..3db9727 100644
--- a/assigner/commands/status.py
+++ b/assigner/commands/status.py
@@ -86,11 +86,6 @@ def status(conf, backend, args):
             row[6] = head["short_id"]
             row[7] = head["author_name"]
             created_at = head["created_at"]
-            # Fix UTC offset format in GitLab's datetime: prior to py3.7, UTC offsets could not contain colons
-            created_at = created_at[:-7] + created_at[-7:].replace(':', '')
-            # Remove odd postfix and add missing 0 to UTC offset
-            if created_at.endswith('-0000'):
-                created_at = created_at[:-5] + '0'
             row[8] = datetime.strptime(
                 created_at, "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%f%z"
             ).astimezone().strftime("%c")
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 311496f..910ef1f 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ pyapi-gitlab==7.8.5
 pyflakes==2.1.1
 requests==2.21.0
 six==1.12
-smmap==0.9.0
+smmap==3.0.1
 wheel==0.24.0
 PTable==0.9.2
 progressbar2==3.10.1