@ Brenda McViking
How true your comments were. I have been retired for some years but an associated company had even worse rules than yours. One 'command centre' had a critical capacity issue with the power feed to the site. The manager needed more seats so took the wise route of buying LED displays on petty cash for just over £100 a time rather than £2,000 per throw from the 'supplier of choice' As a circa £100 item they were not capitalised and were classed as expendable so did not justify a supplier's maintenance agreement. He also saved the cost of a new power supply, (£50,000 plus) and its follow on higher bills. Mind you their procurement cycle time for new kits was up to 12 months. This did not sit well with a just in time style desire to buy kit to service new contracts.The different business in which I worked had a customer first service ethic, so we ended up servicing both ends of the deal with equipment. (The same brilliant unit had even managed to sign off on empty racks 'as ready for service', so their super systems really worked well. The customer suffered a two week's delay while we, not the sister bunch organised the missing equipment to arrive, oops.)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
