I agree that is the point of this pattern. But in practice most places where I see it employed are full of single line method bodies because people have heard o

I agree that is the point of this pattern. But in practice most places where I see it employed are full of single line method bodies because people have heard of the pattern but don't understand the (fairly frankly rare) instances where it is appropriate and/or don't understand when an operation is long enough that it makes the code clearer to break it out. Overall I see this pattern as a net negative - I've yet to work on a project where more than a tiny minority of service object classes have any reason to be one.