I don't think you understand what "grinding" means. Grinding is explicitly about rewards - you're doing something repetitive over and over in order to gain a reward (levels, loot, faction points, something).
I just sell the .38 since I rarely run low on anything. Though I did run completely out of .308 once. I misunderstood the never-ending rifle to mean that it used no ammo, when in fact it simply doesn't use the magazine system. I ran dry with two .308 rifles and had to fight my way out of the southwest corner with nothing but a 10mm pistol - lots of running! Now I watch it like a hawk and periodically switch between carrying .45, .308, and 5.56x45mm rifles, and sometimes a gauss rifle. Last time I played, I even carried a laser and a plasma rifle. They are so light!
Enemy AI isn't nearly as bad though. I never see them hit each other with grenades and they often hit me, whereas if I make the mistake of giving grenades to my companion, I can bank on 90% of them damaging me whether the enemy is a blood bug in my face or a mutant a hundred yards away. I also never see them getting stuck in terrain, whereas I have spent hours of my life trying to coax companions through imaginary obstacles. It's so bad that I commonly just run off far enough that the companion teleports to me, then lead him back to his power armor rather than trying to get him out of a building that settlers freely wander in and out of. And I have to lead him to the correct side, else he will happily run into his own armor's front in an otherwise wide open plaza and then declare it unreachable.
They go through tons of ammo and manage to get their power armor destroyed most of the time. They do however sometimes say interesting things - although most times, they say the same things over and over again ad nauseum.
