Shoutout to the supply house guy in Tulsa who showed me a 30 second trick with a toner probe
I was picking up a box of compression fittings at a supply house over on 11th Street in Tulsa a couple weeks back and the older guy behind the counter noticed my toner probe clipped to my belt. He asked if I was still hunting drops the slow way and then walked me through holding the probe flat against the drywall and sweeping it in a slow X pattern instead of dragging it along like a wand. Cut my locate time on a 6 drop rough-in from almost 40 minutes to about 12. I have been running cable for 9 years and nobody ever showed me that. I felt like an idiot standing there in the parking lot testing it on my own van. He said he learned it from a phone tech back in the 90s and just never thought to mention it because nobody asks. So now I am asking this group, what is the one dumb little trick you picked up from somebody at a counter or on a job that you wish you had known on day one?