I used to go absolutely mental when I was leading a crew, where of 4 lads only 1 could operate stairs, or only one could tow a GPU (but not put it on the aircraft). It was so inflexible it was ridiculous, and if you did get hit with several a/c coming in at once, you did get times when you couldn't get steps on because you didnt have enough TRAINED staff. Instead of 5 lads who could meet the inbounds, and get the stairs on, you effectively had 1 lad who could do it, and delays mount up.
Ah yes .. heard one handling agent refer to them as the "telly watchers"
The experienced peeps would tell them to stay in the rest room watching the telly as they felt it only slowed them down or made things downright dangerous to have them on their teams....