oH, GOSH ARE YOU EVER CORRECT..!
Lets give you brownie points for the finer points of personal etiquette. What would we ever do without your expertise? maybe we would miss the whole point of this story?
I didn’t see this posted before so I was interested in reading it. IMHO if a gift is given & you are asked to honor a request ....then you ought to honor it. If you don’t want or plan to honor that request then don’t take the gift.