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.