Having recently bought some furniture at a big box store, I couldn’t help seeing these three dreaded words were boldly printed on the outside of the carton: “Some Assembly Required.”

As I opened the box, I wondered what I’d find. Would there be lengthy assembly instructions and lots of different screws, bolts, washers, and nuts? Could I ignore the instructions and use my powers of logic to assemble the furniture? (Real men don’t read instructions!) If there were many small parts and I had to follow the instructions, would they be in readable English? Would the instructions be mostly in pictures that clearly showed assembly sequences? Would they have diagrams of full-size screws, bolts, etc. so that measurement with a ruler wouldn’t be needed? Would all the parts be there? Have the pieces been cut/machined correctly?

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