Practical Drift
Bad habits would be a term given by punitive managers trying to make a point rather than trying to fix the problem. Because too often the problem is the system itself. And the things that make it work are the people who run it. And we are not talking about un-motivated local authority workers skiving off work because they can be bothered. I'm talking about highly motivated people who want to do nothing less than a good job. Unfortunately, they are also the people who unknowingly cross the grey margin from relatively safe to highly dangerous.
It has another name: Practical drift. It is defined as the unintentional adaptation of routine behaviors from written procedures. The occurrence of practical drift can result in a catastrophic disaster in normally highly reliable systems.
These are also the little tweaks we all put in to make a system work. We do them just to get the job done more efficiently. Things like not wearing your HiViz vest, releasing the brakes early so your friend the Disatcher can get an on-tine departure, taxiing at 35 Kts to ensure your passengers make their connections, and so on. And then sometimes we have to do them because the job as described would be impossible. I remember once that we had to release the brakes to perform a power-back and when we only when we were reversing could we start the engines. Place this particular crew in the system they operated and then think again before you start throwing rocks at them.
PM