Disregardig the marshaller.
Picture this - Jumbo freighter with a nose opening door. Early morning (daylight) at a busy German airfield. We'd had a long night, were tired and simply wanted to park, shutdown and get into the crewbus to the hotel for some breakfast, a shower and bed.
As we pulled onto the stand the guidance was not illuminated but there was a marshaller positioned ahead and to the left in full view. The yellow painted stand centre line was also in good view. However...the marshaller wanted us way over to the left, nowhere near the stand centreline. We stopped and discussed the situation and decided that two skygahds knew better than a lowly marshaller. The marshaller became more and more frantic with his bats/wands as we ignored him and crept forward on the stand cetreline until he eventually threw his bats down in disgust and walked away. We judged that we were well onto the stand, put on the park brake and shut down. There was surprisingly little activity down below but after a delay a set of steps arrived and the ground engineer appeared in the flight deck. 'Did you see the marshaller? was his terse opening remark, no 'Guten Tag' from him. I explained that the marshaller needed to go back to school as we'd be parked at an acute angle if we'd followed his guidance. 'Yes' said our ground man, 'We could then open the nose door, which we can't now do cos the light pole (with the non illuminated guidance system on it - a clue there) is in the way. Would you mind staying here to release and re-apply the park brake once we've found a tractor to push you back and re-align you'. As they weren't expecting to use a tow tractor at that time in the morning we were stuck for almost an hour until they found one available. Eventually we could leave the aircraft to the load team, thoughts of breakfast now in the distant past.
Moral to the story...The marhsaller invariably knows best and has his reasons. That's why he's paid to be there.
S