Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you give me a concrete example of a massive distributed system that has zero downtime? Because the largest distributed system I have seen and worked on was at Apple (or maybe DFP at Google) - and even though they had some of the smartest people in the world and literally billions of dollars behind them, there were still an endless list of problems and downtime events. Spoiler alert: It doesn't exist.
The point isn't that "a system cannot fail", the point is "if the system fails, it's no big deal, shit happens, cut them some slack" is a weird way to look at it for corporate systems, especially in sensitive areas. If you're running a HA system and you only need one nine to express your availability percentage, sure, sure, you have the smartest people etc and you're doing such a great job, and yeah, yeah, show me on…
It didn't say it's no big deal, you're extrapolating and exaggerating my words because your argument is weak.
My point was that failure is inevitable in any complex system, and I was responding to the parents point that he immediately pointed the finger at management in an accusatory way, and I was saying that's not constructive.
Also your point "They expect to be paid" is actually implicitly "I expect management do do their best to pay me" - there could be a failure in the payroll system, there could be a failure in the banks, there could be many reasons outside managements control that means I'm not getting paid. I can say "why don't you have redundant payroll systems" (which is a stupid waste of resources given the cost/benefit/low failure rate) But my point is again - complex systems have failures - and SOMETIMES, JUST SOMETIMES, YOU CAN CUT THEM SOME SLACK.