Jeff Wisnia wrote:
Having retired into the job of business manager in SWMBO's practice
makes me the only male in an office of about a dozen ladies. That has
its benefits and hardships, one of the latter being that I'm the guy
the others come to when one of the quad 40W flourescent lighting "pan"
fixtures needs a bulb changed.

After having done that job enough times to make me hate it, I devised
a couple of tricks which do make the job go easier for me, viz.:

A. I use a marking pen to make a short line on the glass at each end
of the bulbs adjacent to one of the end pins. That cuts down on the
fiddling required to orient the bulb so that the pins are at the top
center when starting the bulb pins into the sockets.

B. I put a thin wipe of white grease on all four pins. That makes
rotating the bulb into place much easier, I don't have to twist it so
hard that I feel I'm close to bending a pin or snapping off part of a
socket. And no, I've never noticed any electrical contact problems
because of greasing the bulb pins.

YMMV, but those two tricks work for me.

Thanks for the tips. Here's one you can use:

Have the ladies climb the ladder while you steady it from below.