That’s just the way we do things around here

I’d heard the Bureaucracy in the Planet of the Apes, but not this one:

As an example, an interesting story comes to mind. I once read in a psychology publication about a young mother who always slices the ends off the meat loaf before placing it on a dish to serve her family: she doesn’t know why she does it —only because her mother did it that way. When her mother is asked why she sliced off the ends of the meat loaf before serving the family, she only knows that her mother did it that way. When the elderly grandma is asked why she sliced off the ends of the meat loaf before serving it to the family she answers that she sliced the ends off to make it fit into the only serving tray she had at the time. Namaste.

Ira Glass on Storytelling