I think it’s the exact opposite, AP leadership has more responsibilities on their plates than ever before, just not on the store op side so if you’re not AP you’re not necessarily going to see everything that AP leaders are doing.
Guest relations isn’t supposed to ever tell us to do that, are you sure it was actually guest relations? My store had a booster do that with Sonicare and tricked out ETL-Hr who was brand new into doing it for her before checking with AP.