I have a pet theory on the whole thing. Humans are pretty much pattern matching machines. I get the feeling that a certain percentage of individuals in abscense of a known crisis will value the pattern over basic feelings. It gets worse after someone else has had to perform actions and now the person who did nothing must do something. So resolving out of pattern things is a priority.

I know it sounds weird and I am probably doing a bad job explaining, but it just seems like some people cannot stretch beyond the pattern that the rules say should be there. You are absolutely right, it doesn't excuse anything, but it just seems like you can make some amazing predictions of post-crisis behavior based on what you think they think the "pattern" should be.

>I have a pet theory on the whole thing. Humans are pretty much pattern matching machines. I get the feeling that a certain percentage of individuals in abscense of a known crisis will value the pattern over basic feelings.

That's the core of "Parable of the Monkeys." I'm not sure what the canonical source is, but here's a concise rendition: http://allhazardscontemplations.blogspot.com/2009/06/monkey-...

That is some scary reading. I would love to find the canonical source of the study. So, breaking a pattern requires ignorance or innovation.

If you are right about the pattern matching, why doesn't he focus on the guy being there in the middle of the night and encourage him instead?

A pattern-matcher (and I think you are right about that) would focus on the most out of the ordinary thing, would he not?

I mean a Tiger in coming towards you. Do you notice (or care about) the bustling leaves on the bush?

> I mean a Tiger in coming towards you. Do you notice (or care about) the bustling leaves on the bush?

I think you missed the clause "in abscense of a known crisis will value the pattern over basic feelings". Not being a zoo keeper, I would think a Tiger constitutes a crisis.

I cannot help but think the manager found that there was no current crisis, someone had taken action, he must now take action, then we get the thing out of place. I would assume (yeah, that word) the normal behavior would be to send the tech home with a "great job" and a "we got it from here". Nope, let's fix the pattern.

I don't think it's a conscious decision.

Sometimes petty issues come from an even darker place, like punishing non-conformity.