You are trying to change reality to fit your world view. You want to believe so badly that following the letter of the contract could never result in poorer customer service, you are willing to project what a customer would actually consider good or poor customer service, what they would or would not consider satisfactory. Interesting. Sounds oddly familiar, wanting to change interpretation of reality to fit their preconceived notion of correct behavior, now what group of UPSers gets accused of doing that so often....?
And here you do admit customer service and breaking the rules are hand in hand in this particular situation. Was that really so hard? Many of your brothers and sisters in the union will find it very difficult. Many I have read on these forums desperately want to believe that the only reason management EVER breaks the rules is out of greed and down right maniacal glee at being evil. They also want to believe that following every rule in the contract to the letter is always under every circumstance the best path and the only way to take car of our customers. They want to believe this, IMHO, so that they can view management as lower life forms and feel better about themselves by comparison. In all the years I have been reading these forums and your posts, I have never gotten that impression from you.
No. Just no.
I love Southwest Airlines. They are convenient, usually efficient, but mostly, they have a great customer service model. One of the stories I heard about SWA years ago - A young mother was traveling with her infant. She had a 2 hour layover and realized she had forgotten to put enough formula in her carry on. She is stuck in an airport in a strange city with no way to feed her baby. A SWA customer service agent ran to a local market, bought her formula, and brought it back. That story is one of the reasons I always fly with them when I can. But when I do fly with them with my infant, I don't leave the formula home and expect them to provide it for me, that would be ridiculous.
I have many other examples of companies going above and beyond that gives me a good feel for their level of customer service and convinces me to use them even though I would not expect the exact behavior described in the story. To do so would be ridiculous.
Your assertion in this case, that any new customers this story might bring us would automatically expect this exact same behavior is ridiculous.
If you read enough of my posts from over the years I think you will find yourself forced to agree I am somewhat of an expert on making ridiculous assertions.