Velocity Question

Hello Everyone,

So I'm using velocity to move a 2D game object. I have turned off the gravity in the world and set the gravity scale to 0 on the game objects to be certain. I'm using the following to move the game objects

     _rigidbody2D.velocity =  direction * speed;

When I have a positive direction of 1,0 it works fine but if I have a direction of -1,0 the game object crawls. I'm guessing I'm doing something wrong or not understanding something about how velocity works.