I like scripting my shell using a shell scripting langauge; if I have a few dozen (or hundred) console operations that need to be done often, then a shell script is more concise than ruby. If I need to add error handling, exceptions, networking, etc, then it's time to move up, but if all that's needed are external programs and some looping and conditionals, then I don't see any problem with scripting.
I don't feel comfortable posting code from my employer here, sorry. But let me address your counter-argument on its own: Saying you can write bad Ruby or Python is a turing tarpit argument. You can write bad code in any language, but I've seen a lot more bad shell script code than I've seen bad Python. Add to that that shell scripting languages are very irregular and I can't see why anyone would use a shell script for something that they actually relied on that was more complicated than invoking a few commands in sequence.
I'd be happy with just winning that battle.