If UX designers made a gas pump, it would be a featureless white pillar with a single button and a hose and it wouldn't work.
So many big firms hire mediocre "designers" out of college and they wireframe whatever the project managers tell them to and they do what they are told.
I better term is just "product designer" but I like UX designer as the name encompasses it perfectly... your job is to know and understand the users experience inside and out, and make it as ideal as possible.
When done right, just like programmers who push back on stupid features because they often have a better grasp of what "good software" compared to the average "business person". Another bad group is the non-startup people who come from older, bigger IT megacorps and run product development, which is a disaster waiting to happen but I've heard of many examples of this.
I should also note I'm only talking from my experience working with startups and SMBs. I personally don't know much about operating design within a giant company.
Those crappy UIs were the result of PHBs sabotaging the work.
I stopped doing UI. It was pointless. We'd mock things up. Validate with usability testing. Rinse, lather, repeat. Until it was spotless.
And then it'd all get trashed by someone(s) with a corner office.
Everytime a car drives up, use a camera to determine their license plate number. If they are a new customer, ask them if they want to save their payment information and fuel grade preferences. If so, everytime they come back, the pump can display "Welcome back John Doe, you can begin pumping".