Sasless, here is a tale from early Sikorsky days that shows the first Sikorsky Chief Test pilot Jimmy Viner (Igor's son in law), a friend who died of old age about 5 years ago, having done the first of about anything we now do with helicopters. He was a true pioneer. Jimmy was noted for his pithy profane advice to youngsters, and I think he agreed with you:
He was doing an airspeed bomb flight (we still fly with a torpedo-like calibrated pitot that we trail from a belly mount). He was lifting it off the ground on a still, hot afternoon. At about 50 feet OGE, he started drooping turns and struggling with power (his S-51 was loaded to the gills). The engineer next to him was worried about damaging his precious instrument, and was calling out on the ICS, "Watch out for the bomb! Watch out for the bomb!" again and again as he leaned out of the opened doorway, watching the chain link fence swoop close to the trailing bomb.
Jimmy was so pissed off that, once he got the aircraft squared away in level flight, he turned to the engineer and shouted, "Let me tell you my priorities! First, young man, F**k the bomb, OK? Then, f**k the helicopter, OK? Then, if necessary, F**k YOU!"
I think that is exactly what you said, Sassless!
I wrote the emergency procedures sections of several flight manuals, and my philosophy is simple. You can read it to your chief pilot. It will not get you a cup of coffee, nor a sympathetic smile, but it will piss him off:
If you spout procedures from memory, you miss the point entirely. Pilots are paid to think, they should actually think about this stuff. If we are dumb enough to forget to print that you must lower the collective to OEI power settings, and you don't do it, it is your problem, cause its your skin. FLY the Aircraft.
The pilots who flew that DC-10 in Chicago when the engine dropped off the wing followed the procedures by the book, slowed to Vy, and crashed, as did the 10 crews who flew it in the sim during the investigation. They all bought the farm. The 11th crew sat back and noted that they were climbing at a healthy rate, and that as they slowed down the aileron was creeping toward the limits. They thought about it, stopped slowing to Vy, and just flew out, then landed successfully.
The Air Canada crew that had a potty flush motor overheat followed the checklist, motored on for many minutes before they realized the fire was serious, and burned a dozen or so pax in the process. They also followed the checklist.
The Air Florida crew at DCA that forgot to turn on deice stayed at half throttle during the takeoff roll because they didn't want to go past takeoff EPR. They hit a bridge rather than overboost their engines. During the emergency, they followed their checklist.
Nowhere in any flight manual do I see that you must not park too close to telephone poles, cause they bend the rotor blades. You have to start with some baseline of intelligence to be qualified to read the manual! You have to THINK when you fly, even if it hurts.
I wrote the paragraph in the start of the 76A section 3, where it said that the PIC must determine the appropriate procedures, these the written procedures are only guidelines. I wrote that because I did not want some chief pilot reading the book to a guy who just landed from an emergency.