My father was an audio engineer/mixer and worked with some big names. He told me a similar story that happened to him later in life when he finally owned his own studio.
There were clients that would always insist on making audio adjustments, for no good reason at all. They were paying to have their music professionally mixed, yet still insisted on making adjustments and changes. Finally my dad and his friend came up with a great solution.
Mind you this was prior to everything being digital, so what they did was they had a massive 24 track. (a really big machine where you can individually adjust the sound of each track) Well what they did was installed a knob that looked just like the other ones in the track, but placed it a bit lower and near to where the client would be sitting.
The client was then told they can adjust the "openness", or the "richness" by adjusting this rotating knob to a particular setting (remember, the knob does nothing, and isn't connected anywhere). My dad said clients would spend hours adjusting this knob until they got it "just right", and would make sure to let everyone know in the studio that knob was dialed in and to not touch it.
It's amazing how many silly things people have to do in all walks of life to placate the ignorant.