There were occasions where I 'liked to get on with set ups'. Why? I've been sitting on the a/c for 10-15 mins; nice & early., but not doing much. Perhaps the a/c has been shut down for a couple of hours, or is first flight of the day. I liked to get some systems fired up to see if they are working while we have an engineer and time to fix any snags. Discovering there is a problem with only 5 mins to push back and a slot seemed to be unnecessarily 'pushing it'.
Regarding modification of manufacturer's techniques: I once flew B767 for 2 different operators whose CP's didn't like VNAV close to the ground on departure. In one, flap retraction was done in V/S and for the other SE acceleration was done in Alt HLD. Both had come from steam driven a/c and like 'the old ways of doing things'. They could not give a sensible reason to those of us who'd come from Boeing trained airlines. Frustrating, messy and not confidence generating in Flt Ops managers.