I have observed two problems that I can only point to a culture of mindless cooperate bullies.

Let’s start with the evidence.

• While wait to board, and mother approached the counter asking when does the  family boarding happen. This mother was holding a <6 month old. The agent sternly said there isn’t one.. When the mother said there was one on my previous leg, the agent replied, “Sorry, it policy that we don’t have a family board”. The mother and child waited out till their section was called. 
• United beat down. A flight was overbooked. And agent randomly selected ~4 people to get off the plane. When one person refused, the police attempted to forcably remove this person.

From these events, I can only conclude that there is a culture of employees hiding behind “rules” that is not empowered. I generally appreciate these tatics in business negetions, engineering reviews, or even commercial pricing. It is tough to be partnered with a customer service based company when the customer is treat with no grey scale. Black and White. The company is always right and you are always wrong.