"I'm going to lose this contract if you don't let me use a very expensive software product for free on your servers even though I don't work there."
The subject is basically the TL;DR, but here are the details.
Many years ago I worked on the consumer helpdesk for a local reseller. We had a lot of local contracts, but also supported regular customers. One day my phone rang: "Thanks for calling reseller tech support. My name is <PERSON>; how can I help you?"
The caller asked if we had a piece of software: As I recall, it would help port users of CTOS into DOS/Windows 3.1. I also remember the price: $1750. Further, it was intended to be installed in a Netware environment. 760
As you might imagine, this was late in the last century, so the gist of the remaining conversation follows:
"Great! That's what I need." I asked him for a method of payment. "I just need you to install it and let me use it."
"On our servers?"
"Yes."
"And then we put it back on the shelf? You want us to do that for free?"
"I need to port over the Office of the Commandant of the Coast Guard* to DOS, and if I can't use this software I'm going to lose the contract and be sued."
"I'm sorry to hear that, sir, but we can't let non-employees on our system, and we sure can't open up a software package for you..."
"You don't understand! I'll be sued for breach of contract if I can't do this! Who do you have to talk to to make this happen?" I put him on hold and talked to my manager, who looked at me like I had grown a second head before shaking his head.
"Sir? My boss says we're not going to do that."
He couldn't take that for an answer and demanded he speak with someone else. I gave him my VPs name and number, then gave the VP a heads-up call right after hanging up.
A few days later, that software package was still in our inventory.
*The Office of the Commandant of the Coast Guard is important in helping me remember this story. A previous employer was a Convergent Technologies (CT) reseller and had sold a lot of CT AWS and NGEN systems to that office. It seems they were moving into the PC world and this guy's small minority-owned business won the contract to port that office into the wonderful world of DOS. I didn't get the name of his business, but I strongly suspect they no longer existed before the year was out. 760