I am not sure when this started to happen, but it is currently a bit annoying in its current state.
For Crafting Benches, it used to be the case that when you placed the appropriate type of
Thrall in the Bench, it would automatically go into the Thrall slot for that bench.
Currently, when you place the Thrall in the bench it goes into the Inventory of the Bench, and not the Thrall slot, requiring the Player to manually place the Thrall in the Thrall slot.
There is a similar issue with the Dismantling Benches.
In the past, when you placed items that could be broken down into the Dismantling Bench, it would automatically go into the active dismantling slot, and started to break down immediately.
Now, when you place an item in the Dismantling Bench, it goes into the standard Inventory, and needs to be manually moved into the dismantling slots.
I am not sure if these changes were made to circumvent certain exploits, or if it is a programming oversight.
Either way, the current status is a bit wonky, and annoying.
Thanks for reading.