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[–] 166 points 3 months ago (10 children)

"because that's just how things are done"

Then things are done in a stupid way for stupid reasons that nobody likes and we shouldn't do it then.

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  • [–] 163 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    A little girl sees her mum cooking sausages and asks "mum, why do you cut the ends off of the sausages before you fry them?" Her mum replies "well, that's how I learned it from my mother."

    So the girl calls her grandma and asks "grandma, why do you and mum always cut the ends off of sausages before you fry them?" The grandma replies "well, that's how I learned it from my mother."

    So the girl calls her great grandmother and asks "great grandma, why do you, mum and grandma always cut the ends off of sausages before you fry them?" The great grandma replies "have they not bought a bigger pan yet?"

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  • [–] 17 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    I've always heard and told it as "baking bread in an oven that got bigger over the years" but it's my favorite go-to for appeal to tradition.

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  • [–] 39 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    “because that’s just how things are done”

    Yeah, that's the essence of conservatism.

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  • [–] 27 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    My family members always get up in arms when I tell them I changed the family recipe for one dish or another. "You can't change perfection!" Then they try it and ask for the recipe. I hate reverence for the mystical ancestors; they can be - and often are - wrong.

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  • [–] 17 points 3 months ago

    And also "this is how we've always done it" - cool, you've always done it wrong.

    I literally did that when I started my current gig, because they were doing so many things manually that were trivially automated and didn't require a three page checklist and multiple hours of time. Within 3 months I took a 4-5hr/instance task into a 30 minute one that also gives you 80% of the shit you need to check off on the QA sheet.

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