You've got a pound and a half of seasoned mince in a bowl and forty meatballs to roll. It's cold, it's greasy, and it takes fifteen minutes of standing there doing the same small motion over and over.
And both hands are gone the whole time. The pot starts boiling over and you can't touch the dial. Your phone rings. Someone needs something. The lid's on the wrong pan. Every single one of those costs you a full hand-wash, and then you're back to cold mince.
Then they come out of the oven and half of them are dry while the fat ones are still pink in the middle, because you rolled them by eye and by eye is never the same twice.
The workarounds don't really solve it. A cookie scoop gives you a dome, not a ball, and it's still one at a time. Meatball tongs are also one at a time and leave a seam down the middle. The big tray-style makers cost thirty dollars, need two full pounds of mince before they do anything, and eat an entire shelf. So most people just stop making them and buy the frozen bag.