The couch example ins't just hypothetical.

My dad was on an Air Force Base when the base commander delegated to his wife picking out all the furniture for the base housing. Naturally, every serviceman's wife hated it.

Positively comedic! Thanks for the funny anecdote! I can imagine the whole situation.

you'd be surprised. At a former job (in IT in academia)...

me: I think we can build something in-house here better than what the vendor will provide, I think the vendor's solution is likely to be a failure for us.

them: Yeah, but if do it in-house and it fails, it's our fault. If the vendor's solution fails, it's their fault -- plenty of very prestigious universities are using this vendor, nobody's going to blame us for choosing them. [Ie, "nobody got fired for picking IBM" basically].