It's all about...someone else

Yes, the customer is always right, but sometimes the customer is too right, as Jon Williams notes. Both Jon and the people who commented on his post note that a procurement should ideally be a partnership between the procuring entity and the bidders, but sometimes this is not the case. My favorite example:

Documents issued to bidders in late December, with a response date in early January, with the added fun that clarification questions couldn’t be answered until a couple of days before proposals were due in “because everyone’s on holiday”.