well....you telling me that by hand - sounds like they rotated the engine crank by hand to get a reading on a compression tester tool. Am I right ?They could of meant via a hand tool ( the compression tester for example).

Because you dont do that - you hook the tool up to each cylinder thru the sparkplug hole....and basically disconnect the fuel supply and start the engine ( engine will free spin as starter rotates it , and the compression will jump up until peaking after a few turns.)