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This is a situation I see my self first hand very often as someone who works in an IT related role. I also see it in other areas and experienced by seemingly everyone, but I don't know if there is a word for it. If not, I think we should make one!

For example: Your car is making a weird abnormal noise when you start it, and it predictably does this every single time you start it. However when you take it to a Mechanic and you start the car like any other time, and the noise is gone.

Maybe there's an idiom or proverb that describes this. I feel this is a common experience that should have more eloquent explaining what happened than saying "I swear I'm not crazy, it was just doing it before you came!"

ChrisPBacon
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  • The same term is used across a wide range of contexts (including software support). What professional "fixers" really hate is *intermittent faults*. But there will be various alternatives (particularly, colloquial expressions, which may be domain-specific). – FumbleFingers Mar 06 '19 at 15:22

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In computer programming, we call this a "heisenbug"

In computer programming jargon, a heisenbug is a software bug that seems to disappear or alter its behavior when one attempts to study it. The term is a pun on the name of Werner Heisenberg, the physicist who first asserted the observer effect of quantum mechanics, which states that the act of observing a system inevitably alters its state.

Wikipedia

I am not familiar with a more general term.