I asked the group if anyone else’s OCD was going crazy with the tables, pointing out that the sizes of the tables were off. WH answered that he didn’t mind the tables, but he thought I’d be more bothered by the wood grain on one table going in the opposite direction from the other. I answered that I hadn’t noticed before, but after he pointed it out, then that bothered me too. Everyone laughed, like you do to humor a crazy person among you. But I couldn’t let it go, so I asked the group if nobody else had OCD tendencies. HB said that he did. In fact, his were so bad sometimes that he would tell people that he actually had CDO, because he had to have them in alphabetical order. While I initially found this funny, I realized that I also perfectly understood that.
After our group was over, I surveyed the cafe and realized that there was no rhyme or reason to how the tables were positioned. Some had wood grain one way and others had it in the opposite direction. But it wasn’t consistent on the rectangular tables versus the square tables. Nor was it consistent on the tables against the wall versus the ones in the middle of the floor. It was absolute chaos! Feeling the need to bring order to this, I jokingly asked the group who was going to stay behind and help me “fix” all of the tables. Everyone quickly made polite excuses for why they needed to be somewhere else before dispersing. I gave it one last shameful look before I too left, realizing that the people currently sitting at those tables probably wouldn’t share my passion for having them turned in the middle of their meals or meetings.
