wow, it took me ages to find this answer!!! thanks! 
thaaaanks, guys, everyone.
you guys are brilliant! I wanted to know this for so long!
PSA, applying transforms is not a direct equivalent of Maya’s freeze transforms. It won’t keep the object origin where it is, and it generally isn’t required in most situations since Blender relies on armatures for rigging, which are automatically zeroed-out.
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Correct. Blender can not be at 0,0.0 translation unless the object origin is at 0,0,0 in world space.
If you want an object to be able to have 0 transforms locally and also be elsewhere in word space there are two options I am aware of. One would be to parent it to another object that has transforms and then 0 locally for that object will be offset from world space.
The second would be to use bones to drive it.