Hit 300 diag jobs in a row without misdiagnosing and nobody warned me it would mess with my head

I hit 300 diagnostic jobs in a row at my shop without a single misdiagnosis last Tuesday. It was just a random number on my clipboard tally but I stopped and stared at it for a solid minute. Three hundred is a lot of cars where you didn't send someone down the wrong road swapping parts they didn't need. I work over on Route 9 in a little 3 bay place so it's not like we see Teslas all day, mostly old pickups and family sedans with weird electrical gremlins. The closest I came was a 98 F150 where I almost called a bad ECM but it turned out to be a corroded ground strap behind the battery tray. Nobody at my shop even keeps count of this stuff, I just did it for my own sanity after getting burned on a Nissan pathfinder back in 21. Has anyone else ever kept a personal streak like that and realized later how easy it is to slip up on simple stuff?

3 comments

3 Comments

maryh962mo ago

That 98 F150 with the corroded ground strap would have definitely sent me down the wrong path too. I mean, 300 is impressive no doubt but maybe it's messing with your head because you're putting way too much pressure on yourself to be perfect every single time. Idk, I've seen guys at my old shop keep little personal scores like that and they'd get so nervous about breaking the streak that they'd start overthinking simple stuff like a bad alternator or a dead battery. It's like the streak becomes the goal instead of just doing good work.

abby3082mo agoMost Upvoted

That 300 streak thing is real though, I've seen it mess with guys who are usually sharp as a tack. You start chasing the number instead of just listening to what the truck is telling you, and that's when you miss something obvious. I wonder if taking a step back and not counting every single fix might actually make you better at finding the problem faster.

joseph9321mo ago

You start chasing the number instead of just listening to what the truck is telling you" - thats the whole thing right there. Ive seen guys with 200+ day streaks miss a simple vacuum leak because they were so focused on hitting that 300 mark. They'd swap parts like crazy instead of stepping back and watching the fuel trims for 30 seconds. The streak becomes the main event and the actual diagnosis gets treated like a side quest. I honestly think ditching the count completely would make most mechanics sharper.