Luckily, I get to avoid building time zone UIs in my day job.

If I were to put it in a UI, I'd try to have locally understandable time zones as the labels, without incorrect offsets. I'd also probably try to give a better than a drop down selection of multiple dozens of options. I might not succeed, in which case I'd fall back to some lowest common denominator based on a survey of popular services. In any event, I agree with you that it is not a high priority for me, and would not be in any app I might develop.