Old habits die hard

It's a funny thing how you get used to doing things a certain way all the time, to the point that you're operating on autopilot. Case in point:

I went to answer the phones at KCRW yesterday morning before the crack of dawn. I've been there before, as I usually am able to manage at least one or two sessions each pledge drive. The station (on the campus of Santa Monica College) isn't too far away from LAX, so it's easy to head over after work and answer phones for a while. Yesterday, though, found me on the freeway at five in the morning, heading straight for the station from the house. Except that I wasn't - about halfway there, I discovered that I wasn't actually on I-10 going to the station in Santa Monica, but had instead automatically headed north up I-5. As I caught myself doing this, I wondered 'Where did I think I was going?' It took me a minute of cogitating to figure out that usually when I pass through that area my destination is the place where I go to get parts for the Rover - which is up in Valencia.

What brought this to mind was something that's happening today at work. First, a bit of background: We're in the process of remodeling the tower cab. New lower counters and consoles are going to take the place of our current equipment, which will make it easier for those of us who aren't on the Lakers back-up squad to see out the windows. Along with the new cabinetry, position and equipment locations are be shifted to improve controller access and the supervisors' ability to monitor the operation. Part of this shifting around is the stairs leading up into the cab. Currently, they come up right behind the Clearance Delivery position, which creates a real bottle neck of people at the top of the stairs. The renovation will place the stair entry along the west wall, where it will not be in the primary flow of ground and clearance controllers. Most of the actual remodeling work is being done on the mid-shifts, when traffic and controller count is down. To accommodate the contractors, the controllers on the mid-shift have been working in the old control tower while the noisiest work gets done. Last night, they finally moved the top of the stairs to the new position along the west wall. The cabinetry part of the job hasn't begun yet, so the old stairway is still there in the middle of the floor. Today, it's been very entertaining to watch as each of us tries to go down the old stairs, only to discover that we can't. The best part is that each time it happens, we laugh at the current victim, only to then repeat the process again even though we all watched and laughed at somebody else. Finally, one wag implemented a fix: