User-specific vs. layout-specific confusion

[Wickerman]

My head is spinning trying to grasp the implication of creating and installing various menu sets. I have a pretty simple situation, with a 'Staff' menu set that severely restricts menu accesss in all layouts.  I have the Staff menu defined to display when Get(AccountPrivilegeSetName) = "Staff".  That seems to work okay.  All other logins enjoy "Full Access" privileges and the standard Filemaker menu set, which is set as the default for the file.   This is all working okay.

The thing is, I have two layouts a 'home page' and a 'preferences'  settings page where i don't want to allow record creation or deletion. I thought I could create a custom menu set, called say "Restricted" where I include all the standard menus but edit the 'Records' menu to remove anything to do with record creation/deletion.  Then on the 'Layout Setup' panel for those fields I specify that 'Restrict5ed' set as the "Menu Set."

. . . but this doesn't seem to work -- I feel like my various settings are conflicting or pre-empting one another.  Having made this change, the Staff menus no longer seem to apply.  Once you visit the home page, it installs the 'Restricted' set and then those persist even in other layouts?   There just seem to be too many variables -- between 'default' menu sets, the 'Set menus' login script command, the layout-specific  setup . . . I feel like I'm just thrashing around trying this then that and messing up stuff that was already working and not understanding which option takes precedence in any given situation.   Is there a resource anyplace for putting all this in perspective?