No matter who you are, what you do, or where you work, stubborn bosses who are obsessed with the “good ol’ days” sure aren’t hard to come by. And the old school mentality can often made modernization and efficiency near impossible.

How would you handle a boss who was so stuck in their ways that it made your day to day tasks unbearable? One guy recently shared a story with Reddit that exemplified exactly how this situation rarely changes. Here’s what he said.

Because we’ve always done it that way.

In the 80’s, I was working in engineering doing tech support for the CAD system.

Basically the system operator for the IBM 4381 that the CAD terminals ran on, plotters, data transfer, etc.

I’ll try to keep this simple.

English vernacular would be great here.

I got volunteered to work on a standardization project, making everything consistent as we put it all into CAD.

A typical product unit took about 30-40 drawings in about 20 categories and there were thousands of units, created over a 30 year time frame.

Standard parts, but assembled differently for ending up in 20 different (US) states.

Seems straightforward enough.

So all the drawings were dimensioned right to left – bottom R to L, right side R to L, top R to L.. EXCEPT for the interior series which were LEFT to RIGHT; and then it flipped back to Right to Left for the rest.

So WHY?

I asked the drafting engineers.

Surely those folks would know.

No Idea- I asked the architects.

No Idea- I asked production – No Idea.

Finally, I talked to a engineering manager who had been there for over 25 years.

Well if anybody would know, it’s that guy.

And he laughed and laughed.

30 years ago, when the whole was really running well, that interior series were built by “Good ole Russ” and Russ was cross eyed – it was easier for him to read this way.

So 30 years later, we were still catering to a good ole boy who had retired decades ago.

Ain’t that just the way. There’s no doubt the Reddit community had a lot to say about this one.

The comments section could immediately relate all too well.

Others shared highlights they learned from their time in that field.

One person reveled in the humor of it all.

Some offered up their own insights.

And one person emphasized how the same story always ends.

If it is, or isn’t broke, I guess still don’t fix it?

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who reported her manager to HR after being forced to work 24-hours straight.