Bluff.

Yes it was a bluff. In these days of multi-tasking one man could never get away with doing so little. Unless of course he was a fucking manager. The days of one-man one-job are a distant memory. When I was a lot younger I worked with the electricians at Oldhams batteries, and one day they nearly went out on strike because a lab technician had changed a light bulb. Ah the good old days, the strike was averted because the lab technician apologised and blamed it on his lack of experience with big hairy left wing buggers wielding soldering irons. I foresaw the slippery slope when I saw a job advertised, it was for machine operators and the requirement was that you had to be a time served fitter. In other words you ran the machine (making cigarettes) and if it broke down you fixed it yourself. All this aside, the pole monkey hasn’t been swallowed up by someone doing a dozen other jobs, he never actually existed.