Isn't that just the truth. In my last job we flew mostly in the middle of the night and traffic was light. Assuming that the weather was reasonably benign most airfields in Europe would offer us a straight-in visual to the opposite end of the runway given on the ATIS.
This used to cause great panic to a lot of the youngsters that I was trying to teach. As you say, their first reaction was to start trying to punch rubbish into the automatics.
I used to stop them very, very firmly and make them look out of the window and land the bloody aeroplane.
What would cause even more panic was if ATC invited them to fly a visual approach from downwind.
How can these people call themselves professional PILOTS?