I flew back on a German aircraft two days ago and the order was given for the seat backs to be put upright for landing except the guy in front said he would not. The crew overlooked this as he was a premium card holder, yes, I overheard the conversation. in view of this being a safety requirement I guess the crew could qualify for the title of numpty. On your logic does that mean all crew are numpties?
Probably very intelligent and wise, experienced FAs, I suspect. Seats have to be up so that pax behind can adopt emergency brace position in an emergency. In some cases it's obviously not a problem if plenty of space, in the estimation of the FA. In any case FA might have decided that it's wiser to address that one seat issue in an emergency than have an argument just before landing with a difficult pax. Now if ALL the seats were back, of course that would be different, but just one is probably not a problem. Probably full marks to the FA who made that decision.