That would certainly explain it.

For the record, the safe way to clear your handgun at home is to just take the mag out and set it down. You shouldn't be doing what you do to clear a malfunction on the firing line if you're just sitting in your house getting ready to work on it. Those are two entirely separate procedures. Remove the mag, set it on the table separate from the handgun, rack the slide to eject any round that's in the chamber, then lock the slide back, visually look inside the chamber to make sure you don't see the head of a case, and if you can't see in the chamber then jam a finger in there and make sure there's nothing. Obviously the gun stays pointed away from yourself, away from pets, away from other people, and away from anything expensive while you do all this.

If you're clearing a normal malfunction in a live fire drill, tap and rack is all you do. The magazine should never leave the magwell and the gun should never point anywhere other than straight downrange during this entire procedure.

If you're clearing a major malfunction of some kind during a live fire drill, what I usually do is take the mag out and hold it by its base between my index and middle fingers in my left hand while I rack the slide hard twice (locking it back on the second rack) and visually look in the chamber to make sure the obstruction is clear, and then pop it back in and release the slide. On a gun with a shitty slide release obviously you just pull the slide back instead of using said release (Glock, I'm looking at you).

My qualification is being born in the South. I'm not sure if that's hi-speed enough to be an "instructor" or not but I like to think I've got the system figured out by now since I've been doing it since I was a toddler.