jjohn2

I can provide a real-life (tongue-in-cheek) example in which knowing what your coworkers make may lead to a 'hostile' work environment. I work for a state agency in which all our salaries are public record (and made quite available to be searched for on the local newspaper's website).

There's two developers in our mixed group, of which I am one. The other makes a moderate amount more than me. However, he is much more senior than me, and to be honest, a better coder too, so it's understandable. My gripe is that I think we're both underpayed and I think we both deserve a healthy raise. I wish he was motivated to ask for one instead of just taking the yearly cost-of-living increases so that I might ask for one myself. And that annoys me greatly sometimes. I have yet to be hostile though. :)

You can find them in the inboard motors on many not-so-old boats. My 10 year old Mercruiser uses one (although I think the newer Mercruisers have all shifted to EFI). I found the site to be very instructive. I'm always interested in learning more about how the engine in my boat works in case there's anything I can repair at home instead of taking it to the shop. I think a lot of the information on the site is transferable seeing as how mine is essentially a GM produced 'car-engine' mounted in a hull (minus a transmission and some other things).

I tried to gloss over parts of the story, lest I add another compulsion to my list of OCD habits, but I ended up reading them anyway. I hope none of them bleed into my own OCD compulsions. OCD is terrible, it doesn't make any sense to me as much as I've tried to understand it. I know the things I do are completely irrational yet I still do them anyway.

I got hope from the telling that the compulsions can wane over time but I'm fearful they can come back even stronger. I did, however, learn something new in that my OCD did not begin when I first though it began (sometime in 2004 when I first thought something was wrong), but 14 years earlier when I was age 10 and had to sleep with my covers tucked underneath me (to prevent the spiders under my bed from getting at me). Maybe this will help in therapy..