My first job was doing software engineering consulting. My main client was a defense contractor. We wanted to at least use cvs or svn for source control, but you wouldn't believe the red tape associated with getting approval to use a free source control system... so we used date-named zip files for "source control". The rule was the last person out at the end of the day zipped up the shared drive contents and shut off the lights.
Though, we were required to keep good backups. 3 sets of tapes.. 1 always in the tape drive, 1 always in a fire-proof bomb-resistant bunker, and one sometimes in transit to or from the bunker.
Our manager was paying some obscene sum for this backup service, so I suggested we just hide one of the daily backup zip files and pretend we deleted it. The head of the group humored my request. It turned out that nobody was monitoring the tape or the backup job. The tape had filled up and nobody had swapped tapes and called the bunker courier.
Luckily, they at least used PVCS for configuration management of the releases. No source control for development, but every time we cut a release of the software, the head office sent over no fewer than 3 people to literally watch over our poor release guy's shoulder as he zipped up the source, built the binaries, checked both into PVCS, and burned two CDs of binaries and source.
Defense industry... things you're required to do get done in triplicate. Things you're not required to do, but cost no money and significantly reduce risk, take approvals from 5 different people 9 levels above you. I guess how often the backup tape needed to be checked for available space was insufficiently specified.
On a side note, at that client I also once sat quietly in a meeting for 30 minutes watching two grown men argue over if my use of "will" in a design document needed to be changed to "shall". I didn't care, and right away said I was fine changing the word to "shall", but the second reviewer was adamantly opposed to unnecessary changes.