A barista in Portland told me my grinder was lying to me, and she was right

I brought my bag of beans into this tiny shop near Powell's last Saturday, complaining they tasted sour no matter what I did. The barista, who was maybe 22, asked to see my grind setting and then just laughed, not mean but like I was a kid who put shoes on the wrong feet. She said my grinder was producing too many fines, so the water was channeling through the cracks and leaving half the coffee under extracted. I had been fighting with brew time and water temp for 2 months, buying three different pour-over kettles, and it was all because my burrs were misaligned. She showed me how to do the marker test on the burrs, and sure enough, only one side was touching. I fixed the alignment in 15 minutes with a washer I had in my toolbox, and my morning cup went from sharp to sweet overnight. Has anyone else had a shop diagnose a gear problem instead of a technique problem? I feel like I wasted a lot of good Ethiopian beans on that.

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