I was assembling our new detectors at work. I had taken it apart for some thing a few days back and it was the first time I was putting it back together and I was not sure how the pieces fit. David (a colleague from PEM) was giving instructions via the speaker phone and Mohan (colleague from Fox Chase)  was helping me assemble the whole thing. It’s difficult to assemble something which costs about 250K even with written precise instructions, so understandably I was nervous and wanted to make doubly sure of each part before connecting it.
Contrary to first principles, David asked me to connect everything else before mounting it on the base. I was not very sure this is what he meant…because it meant I had to assemble the detectors first and then attach them to a base and the screws went in from below. So I  pushed the base holding the detectors from the stand to the edge of the table, such that it was half hanging in the air and confirmed what is it that I had to do , loudly, â€David, does this mean that now I have to get down on my knees and screw?â€
You can guess there was an uncomfortable silence for a minute or so…
