A previous company I worked for formed a committee consisting of various end
users and management. This committee was to discuss and approve any design
decisions I made on a new application in an effort to get full end-user
buy-in.

In laying out the database I specified 4 digit years for all date fields,
and was informed by the committee that there was no reason for 4 digit years
and I was creating unnecessary work for the users by requiring the 2
additional keystrokes.

I tried going over the committe's head, but was told that I had to abide by
their decision. I could not even store the dates with a 4 digit year as this
was considered unnecessary and would cause more work when writing reports as
they would have to convert all date prompts from 2 digit to 4 digit years.

I have seen many decisions made like this over the years, so I have felt
very little sympathy for businesses that had to spend a fortune to fix the
problem now.