(O)CD

It was documented earlier in the challenge that I am not a neat person. That makes this next piece of information all the more perplexing.

I work in a lab in a factory and we test samples there. These samples arrive in a tube through a pneumatic tube system, like at banks. We open the tube, cut pieces off of the samples to be tested, stack the remaining pieces up on the table in front of us, and send the tube back. We then load the cut pieces into the appropriate equipment to be tested. We have banks of these tube systems and depending on which side you are working on you are receiving tubes from 2 to 4 different places. Usually it is 3. So you have 3 stacks that you are working on at once.

Okay, so I'm a slob. I have no trouble living amid clutter and chaos. But when I am at work...I can't. My stacks have got to be perfect. I will stop what I am doing and re-stack them if they start getting wonky. When I come back from break I will re-stack what the relief person stacked while I am gone. My co-workers are all aware of this, shall we say, fetish of mine. Some of them will just leave my samples lying on the table if they have to cut any for me so I can stack them my own way.

It wouldn't be such a big deal if these stacks were important in any way, but they're not. At the end of the shift they are taken downstairs and recycled. Who cares if mine are the prettiest on the pallet? No one, that's who. And, no kidding, every day when I come back from break I tell myself to just let it go; it's not a big deal at all. But I just can't. I get this really heavy pressure in my chest and it gets really hard to breath and I hear a ringing in my ears. And I. Must. Re. Stack.

There, that's better.