The United staff had forgotten the lesson about breaking guitars (2008) despite saying at the time that they wanted to learn from it. But, for compensation, you can be sure that there are limits the staff can go to and, probably, those limits have always worked. Going higher needs phone calls to those nowhere near the problem who will, probably, tell them to stick to the rules. The staff know this.
To understand the lack of authority that agents and crew have, read 'From Worst To First' by Gordon Bethune and how he turned Continental around. One of the key problems in their customer 'service' was that the staff were tied down by rules set by managers who did not have to implement them, overseen by accountants who could not see the big picture and did not understand 'service'.
Guess who bought Continental ...?
