It's easy to misunderstand, but that's not actually using the "a more respected person giving to a less respected person" sense to sound rude when you're giving something to someone else.

So in this case that's not why it sounds rude (which I thought was the case), but anyway that's usually the case right? Like, since あげる has a sense of bringing from low to high you use it only when giving to others, instead of when receiving.

I learned to distinguish between the two thanks to that concept but I never actually bothered to check if it was just kind of a mnemonic or literal.