[sammyg2]

BTDT, here's one possible scenario rthat may shed some light on how it works:
You will be playing the part of the government, I'll be the contractor.

Suppose you are working on a large project and need a toilet seat. Not just any toilet seat, a special one that has to be a custom size and has to meet hundreds of different specifications with stacks of forms and documentation.
You go to my company and ask us to supply that special toilet seat for you.

my company assigns an engineer to design it and he determines it can be purchaed at the local home depot. he tells you this but you don't want to hear it, you want my company to supply it as you don't have an account at home depot and don't feel like sending the next 6 hours filing out the documentation and forms yourself.
So, the engineer contacts the manufacturer and requests the specifications, weight, exact size, weight capacity, etc. All the information he will need to submit to you for your forms. It all meets the specifications you laid out.
He then fills out a requitition form and gives it to purchasing. They contact home depot and get a formal quotation, the issue a PO, and the toilet seat is delivered. the bill is paid, end of story, right?
No.
The engineer has spent at least 6 hours of billable time on your duma$$ request. The purchasing agent has spent at least a half hour processing getting the qoute and the PO and processing the shipping costs. The warehouse guy spends 15 minutes recieving the seat, putting it on the recieving station, and calling the engineer to ask what he's suppose to do with it. Then he spends 20 minutes packaging it up (in the special packaging you require) and ships it to you. The accounts payable clerk has another hour of billable time processing the check, entering the expenses in the log, and then billing YOU for all the costs incurred.
In the end, that toilet seat has actually cost my company about $800 in billable time, but I pencil whip it down to $600 and end up eating ther extra cost, because I don't want to upset you or lose you as a customer.
Then the press gets ahold of it and incites an entire nation of uininformed, knee-jerkers to call for my head on a platter for supplying something to you at a loss.

If you had just went down to the home depot yourself, and if you had gotten rid of most of your ridiculous red-tape and paperwork, this whole mess could have been avoided.