It's pointless because it is not possible for them to check for themselves, unless you expect them to carry laptops around.
And then spend 5/10/15 minutes sitting down to work it all out!
What is needed is for staff (and public) to have access to some sort of computerised version of the guide which can show permitted routes on maps in seconds.
Sadly what I think will happen is that such a thing will become available for the public, but staff won't be given the technology to use it - just how it works at my TOC where on board Guards are not provided with a phone or any equipment that is capable of accessing the internet or live train running or disruption updates etc. Meanwhile the passengers on their smartphones have access to far greater information in the public domain than the Guards do. Yes I can access said information on my own personal phone, and I do, I can even access more information than the public because I have obtained passwords for some other more detailed sources, but these are not provided routinely to us and why should I use my own phone and my own contract allowances and contraband passwords to get information that I
should be provided with to ensure that I can give information to the passengers? Without doing so they know more than me most of the time!
The real problem is the moronic staff who either think they know everything, or are too cowardly to admit that they don't know. The only thing that needs fixing is their attitude to customer service.
Whilst I don't defend staff who take a confrontational attitude with passengers immediately, I can sort of understand some of the reasons why. Lets say you had got a job somewhere, you had done all your training, had read all your briefs and notices, and were following all the instructions and training you had been given by your employer - i.e. doing as you were told - and then some joe bloggs comes up and starts telling you that you are wrong, and starts to say "I can do this because it says so in the routeing guide", yet in all your training and briefs you have never even heard of anything called a routeing guide, and neither have your colleagues, then you might be slightly annoyed - and perhaps even think that the joe bloggs is trying to pull the wool over your eyes - especially if the ticket does seem quite odd, or is against everything you have ever been taught or told.
At various times I have been told, by managers and those who conduct retail training: "The Routeing Guide doesn't exist nowadays", "The RG is irrelevant", "The RG hasn't been updated since xxxx (choose any date more than 5 years ago)" "Why does it matter, if it [a route some is taking] looks reasonable it probably is, if it doesn't it probably isn't".