Several people in my program wanted to do fun stuff like work with video games, which is totally fine! But they were not prepared for the not-so-fun linear algebra, Unix gruntwork, UML modeling and algorithm analysis involved in the course study. Sadly some people washed out, others cheated their way through it (neither of which is exclusive to CS students, to be sure). Seems like doing bootcamp first would give them a chance to decide not to go with CS and just start their career from there, or do something else altogether. Or like your cohort, discover that they just want to know more.
And yeah, nothing taught me how to work with people like working for tips–your livelihood literally depends on your figuring out how to make them happy! Or at least making them think they're happy :)
Some folks who completed it with me went on to work on a CS degree as well.
We talk a lot and many of them think a bootcamp like experience before a CS degree would be a good idea. A sort of fast paced, intense, and "ok now it is time for you to hit the internet and figure out steps 7 through 10" might be a good place to start for a lot of them.
But more specifically to your point working with people is so important. I did some customer service years ago, and I find myself using that all the time, no job asks for it, but when talking to customers (and people who talk to customers) it is indispensable.