Actually, it depends on what is your profile setting fo rthe date format.
Go Profile -> Modify Profile -> Look and Layout
On that page the 2nd entry is Time-format where you can choose how you want it displayed for you -- there are 5 different choices.
E.g. I'm using the YYYY-MM-DD format, but you can choose typical European as well as American style formats.
And I've never experienced any problems either, so unless OP shows some screenshots I tend to believe it to be matter of ignorance on the date-format (as others pointed out).
EDIT : huh, I got ninja'd...