Is there an expression for a situation where something resolves itself?

October 21, 2024 1:18 PM

Say there's a frightening rattle in your car, and you finally take it to the mechanic after planning your day around it - it goes away just like that! Or you have a home Internet issue - after being on hold for two hours, it suddenly works fine. Or an itch that happens to go away when you get to the doctor's office. Is there a phrase for situations where by sheer chance - after already putting time/effort into it - something just happens to resolve by itself? (Along the lines of "sunk cost", but a little more specific to this situation.)
posted by Seeking Direction to Grab Bag (25 answers total)

Best answer: In bug tracker terms, RESOLVED WORKSFORME (WFM).

Military: FM.
posted by zamboni at 1:33 PM on October 21, 2024 [8 favorites]

Best answer: I would file this under Murphy’s Law, personally. Ironically in this case, the thing going wrong is that the thing is going right in an inconvenient way.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 1:43 PM on October 21, 2024 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I generally refer to this as a Michigan J. Frog (after the Looney Tunes cartoon in which a man's singing, dancing frog won't do the bit in front of anyone else).
posted by ourobouros at 1:53 PM on October 21, 2024 [17 favorites]

Best answer: We call it "the fear of God": the thing, when confronted by an authority over it, stops misbehaving and appears at its best.

I don't know if anyone else uses it that way, and I don't use the phrase at work (for fear of offending) where I frequently "put the fear of God into" computers that were just experiencing problems but shape up when I come near.
posted by AzraelBrown at 2:01 PM on October 21, 2024 [2 favorites]

Best answer: In software engineering we sometimes call them Heisenbugs, or Schrodinger’s Bug. Both reference situations where the act of observing significantly affects the thing being observed.

An old phrase to describe Bigfoot and UFOs was Jealous Phenomena. These are things that go to extreme lengths to avoid being captured or recorded. It’s possible your examples are a subset of those.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 2:13 PM on October 21, 2024 [11 favorites]

Best answer: I've always called it Mechanic Syndrome, in 30 years of IT everyone has always understood what it meant.
posted by Lyn Never at 2:42 PM on October 21, 2024 [3 favorites]

Best answer: The most common way "average" people (without using technical or geek culture terminology) is the disappearing pain in doctor's surgery analogy.

"This is like...OR it's like...a pain that goes away the minute you go to the doctor"

I've heard this countless times.
posted by jacobean at 3:01 PM on October 21, 2024 [2 favorites]

Best answer: We call it "The Authority Fix", and attribute it to the gremlins recognizing that a valid authority has appeared and thus stopping their shenanigans.
posted by Illusory contour at 3:09 PM on October 21, 2024 [3 favorites]

Best answer: My grandmother had a saying I’ve always loved, which sorta fits this situation and sorta doesn’t: ‘Inanimate objects are working against us.”
posted by carterk at 3:51 PM on October 21, 2024 [1 favorite]

Best answer: See also resistentialism.
posted by aincandenza at 4:06 PM on October 21, 2024

Best answer: Or "The innate hostility of inanimate objects."
posted by Archer25 at 4:51 PM on October 21, 2024

Best answer: I'd call it "a freaking miracle."
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:19 PM on October 21, 2024

Best answer: If I was being purely descriptive, I'd say "resolve spontaneously." IIRC that's an actual phrase used in medicine.

But in my job I would wag my finger and say "problems that go away by themselves, come back by themselves." Because if you don't know why something changed back, you have no guarantee it won't happen again.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 6:30 PM on October 21, 2024 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Spontaneous electronic/mechanical healing!
posted by rpfields at 8:00 PM on October 21, 2024

Best answer: I'll ask my wife - I'm a tech guy, and especially tech support for her home office, and all I have to do is stand behind her and suddenly the application/web page/printer works
posted by TimHare at 8:32 PM on October 21, 2024 [2 favorites]

Best answer: This is called an “intermittent problem” and is fairly common in my experience. For a car, a good shop will believe your report and go to some effort to replicate it, e.g., let the car sit overnight and see if it does it in the morning, etc. (Note: if you find a good shop, don’t let go of them!). IT techs, same thing. Only IT wankers will say “works for me” and close your ticket, but unfortunately the world is overfull of said wankers. In fairness, they usually have an overwanker keeping track of their “metrics” that forces their hand.

I’m assuming the problem isn’t really resolved permanently, just not happening right now. Otherwise I don’t know what you’d call it.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 10:57 PM on October 21, 2024 [1 favorite]

Best answer: German has a word which doesn't describe this exactly but is similar. When something behaves differently when you are trying to demonstrate it to someone, it is called Vorführeffekt.
posted by kinddieserzeit at 12:22 AM on October 22, 2024 [2 favorites]

Best answer: In a similar vein to those above suggesting that the issue probably isn't actually resolved, I would suggest "unreproducible problem".
posted by jzed at 12:22 AM on October 22, 2024

Best answer: "Machines don't fix themselves!"
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:10 AM on October 22, 2024

Best answer: kinddieserzeit: English has a somewhat German-inspired (or at least inspired by a German physicist) term for this. We call it a "Heisenbug" after Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and the odd behaviours in quantum physics.

This originally specifically referred to a bug that would manifest unless you loaded the program in a debugger: the debugger changes the running environment in subtle but deep-reaching ways, and that simulated the effect of "observation" under Heisenberg's model.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:13 AM on October 22, 2024 [2 favorites]

Best answer: For me the problem that disappears under examination, but returns later is called a "dancing frog". Also if it only happens to a particular person.

A problem that gets neglected and fixes itself _before_ you get around to doing anything about it is a "Great Moment in Laziness"

i.e.

Dun! DUH!!!! You have witnessed another "Great Moment in Laziness"
posted by All Out of Lulz at 5:55 AM on October 22, 2024 [1 favorite]

Best answer: We refer to it as “regenerating hit points” if the problem actually goes away for good on its own. (The observation by an outside person is not required.)
posted by BrashTech at 7:31 AM on October 22, 2024

Best answer: Years ago I read the phrase "the rank obstinacy of things," and assumed (wrongly) that the author meant physical things. Regardless, it's served me well for these many years as a focal point for my frustrations with physical things.
posted by bricoleur at 7:33 AM on October 22, 2024

Best answer: All of these examples can be "intermittent problems" if they later come back.
posted by yohko at 3:59 PM on October 22, 2024 [1 favorite]

Best answer: In our house we say “ah, I see the conky/partner/engineer/plumber* proximity circuit is working”

* insert person for your issue at hand
posted by conkystconk at 10:30 AM on October 24, 2024