The army figured it out. The Officers are in charge, but the sergeants get shit done. In engineering, your leads/supervisors are the sergeants.
Officer quality varies between complete shitbird and Julius Ceasar. Either way, the army marches.
Their main weapon is pestering you.
How hard is it to answer that question?
I just ran into this response yesterday, and I ended up going over his head (unfortunately) and asked our DBAs for a recommendation. DBA solution worked faster than either of the previous two solutions. I still need to apologise for that one.
Curious. Running an idea by people to get their thoughts, because it's currently leaving you short on warm fuzzies... is something to apologize for?
The initial solution was low on warm fuzzies for him. Your second solution was low on warm fuzzies for you. So you explored further. Where's the problem?