Then it's up to me to ask the author to cut one to three pages out of his paper, well after peer review and acceptance, and so who does he get pissed at? Me, of course.
Right. If we have a rule that an article can't have 3 tables, and yet an article with 3 tables gets accepted, it wasn't my decision to accept the damn paper, so I assume it's okay. But of course it's not okay, so they make the freelancer (who isn't even allowed to speak with the EIC, which would make things so much easier) sort this shit out. It's not *just* bullshit, it's inefficient bullshit.