Things that paranoid/anal retentive people do that drive you nuts.

In My Humble Opinion
1

I work with a guy that eats the same food for lunch everyday of the week. Monday is hamburger day, Tuesday is sub sandwich day, Wednesday is pizza day, Thursday is leftover, Friday is fish day. Every week. Every year.
The MIL doesn’t trust her sense of sight or sound and must run her hand under a faucet to determine if it’s completely off or not. Yikes. Although the list with her is long, I shant add more due to the fact that she’s a diagnosed paranoid Schizophrenic and on meds. (And I have some compassion, even though it drives me nuts. Maybe I’m the one with the disorder…)

Anyway, shoot.

2

well, there’s a guy who can’t go to a book sale without bringing home a boxload & piling them with the other boxloads of books in his room and sometimes the hallway and the living room, in spite of all his mother does to keep the house straight-
MOM, get off my computer!

3

Ok, this isn’t a list of compulsions my chosen person has, but she does things repeatedly that drive me so effing mad that i jumped on the chance to move 2500 miles away when it arose, and used getting away from her on the “pros” list.

My aunt; yes i love her but come on.

Every telephone call is laced with the following scenario, many many times within each conversation, on ANY and EVERY subject or matter you could bring up in conversation.

me: Hello
her: Hey
sounds of water running in the back ground
her: whats that sound?
me: im getting a drink of water
her: why?
Immense urge to scream & hang up
me: because, im thirsty?
her: Ohhhhhhhhhh.

next sound, wind blowing, why? because im outside, Ohhhhhhh.
next sound, keyboard clicking, why? because im checking my email, Ohhhhhh.

her: so what are you doing
me: sleeping
her: (can you see where this is going) Ohhhhhhhh
and then she just keeeeeps on talking.

We will underemphasize her compulsion to tell everyone she meets, everything that is going thru her head at any given moment in time.

bear with me, i NEED to get this off my chest, wow this feels incredible.

I’m on the phone with her, and she calls a Dr’s office for me on 3-way so i can get their fax number. Ring ring, Hello. So i ask for the fax number and just as the lady begins to say goodbye and hang up, my aunt chimes in with "IM ON HERE TOO, IM HER AUNT, SHE’S MOVED TO LA AND WE NEED TO GET THE FAX NUMBER SO THE NEW DOCTOR COULD FAX YOU THIS RELEASE FORM TO GET HER RECORDS, AND I LIVE HERE IN TOWN JUST DOWN THE ROAD FROM WHERE SHE USED TO LIVE AND IM CALLING ON 3 WAY SO SHE DOESNT HAVE TO MAKE A LONG DISTANCE CALL <<<<< this continues for a good 5-10 minutes as the lady desperately tries to say Ok, goodbye, wherein im praying to GOD that I didnt give my name for them to link such embarassment to and add a bunch of charges to my bills for payback>>>

Same goes for being in a restaurant, drive thru, mall, grocery store -
oh god please just make it stop.

thud

my condolences to any of you who experience similar or worse on a regular basis

4

This is more obsessive-compulsive, but…

My mom was a neat freak. She couldn’t stand the sight of a dirty dish. When we would have guests over for dinner - maybe four people in addition to our own family, she was constantly washing dishes. She wouldn’t immediately join in the after-dinner coffee and conversation. Instead, she would start washing dishes as soon as everyone was finished eating. Once she was finished with the dishes, she would join the rest of us. But she was constantly jumping up and picking up people’s empty coffee cups and putting them in the sink. Then she would bring them a new cup. She would do this over and over, until by the end of the night she would have a sink full of about twenty coffee cups, though maybe only five people had been drinking coffee.

My roommate now uses an astonishing number of dishes for one man. I swear, he’ll go through every dish in the kitchen in one day. It’s like he needs to use a fresh dish or utensil for everything. So I’ll unload the dishwasher one day and put everything away, and then the next day I’ll come home from work and want to make a sandwich - and I’ll discover that my roommate has dirtied every single knife we have. How on Earth does one guy, eating three meals a day, go through eight table knives? So I’ve got to wash the dishes to make a sandwich.

Of course, maybe it’s just me. I’m a professional cook, and so I’m accustomed to using the same utensil over and over and over in the course of my duties (the same rubber spatula to spread mayonnaise all day; the same knife to cut multiple sandwiches). And I’m also the type who believes that a coffee cup needs to be properly “seasoned” - i.e. the inside of the cup should have a good buildup of coffee residue/stain, so that the coffee always tastes good and rich :wink: I’ll drink out of the same glass for a week before I wash it.

5

I have this mental image of the scenario with “next sound, bedsprings squeaking”… :wink:

6

My dad. This was from years back, but the man will jump to the worst conclusions, especially if he thinks his kids are “talking back to their mother”.

One time, 'bout four or five years ago, my mom was asking me what I’d like for dinner, y’know, for my birthday. She made a suggestion, and I called back to her, “No.”

And then my dad yelled, “Don’t talk back to your mother!”

“I wasn’t talking back.”

“Yes you were, just go and do it.”

“Do what?”

“What she told you to do!”

Then she jumped in and explained the situation none-too-gently. The fat asshole didn’t even apologize.