I’ll tell you what happened.
Your chrome tire guy couldn’t do everything because he isn’t a Toyota dealer (he should’ve known the nature of your problem long before he took your order). Getting the sensor was half the job; if your chrome tire guy thought that pressing the reset switch after installation was the other half…well, what can I tell you? No wonder he said the system reset was kinda weird.
The Toyota guy had to deflate & demount your tire to have access to the sensor so that he could read the sensor’s ID and manually input this 7-digit number, digit by digit, in the vehicle’s tire pressure ECU via Toyota software. Prior to this step, he had to delete the previous sensor ID registration (for the sensor that was missing, remember?) that was, in part, causing the light to blink. Once the new registration was completed the Toyota techie remounted and inflated your tire back to 32 psi. At any moment during this procedure there was not need to mess with the reset switch.
Amaury
'08 Limited