This is the same thing as people judging a photo on a store TV set to vivid mode and then wondering why it looks flat at home. Screens lie to you all day and you don't even notice until something physical has to match them. Same deal with folks tweaking a recipe because their oven runs hot, or blaming their car for a weird noise when it's just the road. The lesson is always the same: test against the thing that's actually real, not the screen or the gauge that's "helping" you.

I had a similar thing happen with my dad's old camping method of stirring in circles for a full minute. Cup came out flat and chalky, just awful. What fixed it for me was going the other way, barely moving the grounds at all, just a quick little nudge to make sure everything gets wet, then leaving it alone. My grinder settings mattered way more than the stirring, if I'm being honest. Three gentle stirs sounds about right to me, your neighbor was probably just too rough with it.