I mean, I exaggerate a little. But only a little. OSHA regulates how we attach ourselves to the structure - harnesses, lifelines, lanyards, etc. But how we do the pulling is, as far as I know, completely unregulated. You’re a professional - don’t drop shit.

In my home market, we do often use progress capture shivs, and this improves safety since if you fuck up and let go for some reason, the shiv takes the weight. But one wheel only provides a redirect of force - which can mean a more advantageous pulling direction, but isn’t technically a mechanical advantage. If you set up a 3-1 to pull a point, you would almost certainly be demoted to stagehand, since you would be pulling more than 3x slower than everyone else. And considering that I regularly do fairly strict one arm deadlifts on the 20mm edge of my tension block with about 130lbs, pulling a 100lb chain isn’t a huge deal.

Also, we are one of the stricter, more conservative markets, since a lot of both our riggers and managers are rock climbers who have little ego attached to the job. Other markets can be significantly more cowboy. A climber who rigs for a living wants to get the job done efficiently and go home with enough energy to climb hard the next day. But the blue collar guy who got the job because he had too many face tattoos and too little patience to learn to weld will see his job as an opportunity to get his rocks off and prove his masculinity or something. And a tour rigger who just landed after following the band through UAE, Rio, and Mexico City will laugh and say OSHA can suck their dick as they slam pins with an unteathered hammer, legs snaked through the tower truss to hold on, since they climbed up with neither harness nor hard hat.

So yeah, straight pulling your point is quite common.