I enjoy smashing rocks into little bits and and stepping over their dusty corpses as much as any other, but imagine if you could give a thrall a pick and assign them to an area to do the smashing for you? This thrall could them take those resources to either a unique resource storage building or the nearest storage container(s) until full. I believe it would be possible to change the resource(s) gathered by assigning the appropriate tool. A UI option to select a specific resource would be phenomenal but may be pushing it 
. This thrall could be limited to the stats of a tier 1 and the gathering area could be the balancing factor in how many GP worker thralls could be deployed and where.
Would this thrall be highly valued? Yes! Would this thrall harvest as effective as your esteemed self? I doubt it. IMO, I believe it would give a little more life to your collection of slav… Eh hem… thralls, increasing the immersion and decreasing the grind!
While I’m on the train to dream land I might as well make an additional suggestion.
Imagine this aforementioned thrall could also be placed on ANY station giving the benefit of a slight increase in crafting speed. ANY station. Even the one’s that currently don’t have a thrall slot. Remember the drying rack used to have a slot? What about the grinder and fluid press? They won’t provide any special recipes or any other benefits that a specialized thrall would. Just imagining the pleasure of watching my fluid press crank out oil from coal just slightly faster than a constipated snail.
OP? Over complicated? Don’t Care? Please share!