Sucky experience, for sure, to be filed under "Lessons Learned"
Outstation personnel is often poorly trained and you should often have low expectations of what they know or should know.
I once almost missed a flight out to JFK from FCO/MXP (on AZ no less) because the check-in agent didn't know how to properly enter the advanced passenger data into the system.
She kept saying that "The system won't accept you, you can't fly, sorry, can't do anything about it."
I had to literally look at her screen and help her enter the data correctly.