Shoutout to the journeyman who watched me wire a 3-way switch backwards for 2 years before finally speaking up

I was consistently getting callbacks on switch boxes where travelers were landing on common and it was a guy from a different crew who casually pointed it out after seeing me do it on a remodel at the Miller Street project, so did you figure out your biggest blunder through someone else's observation or by finally reading the damn manual yourself?

3 comments

3 Comments

faith_carter3h ago

...and see that's exactly why I gotta call you out on calling it "reading the manual" because no one reads the manual. We all just Google the diagram on our phones and pretend we didn't. But to answer your question, yeah it was another guy who saved me from myself. I had been landing 3-way travelers on the common for about a year on a track lighting job at the old courthouse and this old timer named Jerry just watched me do it three times before he finally walked over and said "you keep putting the horse before the cart son." It stung but he was right and I never made that mistake again. The thing is we all think we know what we're doing until someone shows us we don't.

chen.adam3h ago

Funny how pride is usually what gets in the way before knowledge has a chance to step in.

wells.karen3h ago

I did the EXACT same thing on the Johnson Street job, took an old timer named Pete to set me straight.