Wednesday 23 September 2015

Open or closed

I travelled to York yesterday with Virgin trains and when we got there I was at the front of the queue to get off. After a few moments of pressing the button someone whispered from behind me "try pressing the top button".


I got off very embarrassed, and as I walked towards the exit someone came along side me and said "you were so confident I didn't think to check which button you were pressing". That observation in and of it self would be worth a blog post!

It wasn't until I caught the Cross country train home that I realised I might not just have been having one of those moments!

You see the buttons on the way home looked like this:


Of course we should read the instructions each time - but we don't. We generalise and, if more often than not the open button is on the bottom, why would we think to check it wasn't. 

Years ago you could get into different cars and find the lights and indicators in different places (although not the brake and accelerator thankfully). More recently I don't recall having to relearn where they are when I've driven hire cars - so perhaps car manufacturers have learnt not to fiddle about with basic instrumentation (too busy fiddling with other instrumentation it seems!).

A great reminder that we do many things on auto pilot. We do however need to check that it's still relevant to the outcome we're wanting - otherwise we might be a long time waiting for the door to open!

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