TIL I had been using my multimeter leads backward for 6 months

I was chasing a phantom voltage drop on a Garmin GNS 430 last Tuesday and my lead was reading negative where it should have been positive. My coworker Jeff just looked at me and said 'you got the red and black swapped, man' and walked away. Has anyone else done something this dumb for way too long?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_aaron19d ago

I read somewhere that about 10% of people mix up multimeter leads for months before someone finally points it out.

dianahayes19d ago

Oh man that tracks way too hard. I bet half those people are just too embarrassed to admit they've been doing it wrong so they keep quiet until someone else messes up too.

grant.felix19d ago

Yo does Garmin pay people for this stuff or do they just know we're all gonna mess up eventually? lmao I spent a solid three months measuring resistance wrong because I kept leaving the knob on AC voltage. Every reading was just a random number and I was like "yep, that's probably fine." Jeff is a real one for walking away, he saved your pride by not making eye contact.