During the 90s, one of the IT departments was notorious for never admitting failure. If you had a problem with any of their services, they would always deny that it was their fault.

If you presented evidence that it was their problem, you would hear them typing and clicking furiously and eventually they’d ask you to “Try it now.”

When you asked what they’d done to fix the issue, they’d say “Nothing.”

After a while, the rest of IT considered “Try it now” to be code for “Go duck yourself.”

This was in contrast to my own style. If I was going to insist that I didn’t make mistakes, then I’d have to tell a lot more lies than I could comfortably keep track of. When I made a mistake, it was easier to sing it from the rooftops than to deny it. This also had the added benefit that when I did deny that something was my fault, I’d be believed.

My understanding was that the cause of these denials was that the manager of this team was an evil minded son of (an unpleasant person) who delighted in throwing his underlings under the bus.

After a few years, managers and management styles changed and things like “I’ve fixed it” and “Sorry about that” started to appear in the conversation. It got to the point where “Try it now” became code for “Try it now”.

Of course, now we have to say “Go duck yourself” when we want to say “Go duck yourself.”