Colonel, we used to do what you were originaly considering. We explained and showed it to our customers who needed extreme gearing. We'd shift into the small/small combo and show them the slack and then go gear by gear untill the slack was taken up and tell them the remaining gears were all they could use in the small ring.

In almost all cases if you need that low of a gear you probably aren't using the big chainring to it's potential and thus should go to a smaller big ring to help with chain wrap issues.