Air Traffic Controllers Are a Specific Breed
They get edgy when something is out of place.
The FAA exam was a series of questions about airplanes on collision courses. They wanted to know if and where the airplanes would collide. After passing that test, I went back for a psychological exam of an extremely transparent nature. “Does the top of your head feel soft?” “Does it sometimes seem as if everyone is watching you?”
Years later, after I had observed controllers for a while, I realized that the psychological test had not been to weed out psychos, but rather to select a particular kind of psycho. Many controllers have an overinflated sense of order, becoming edgy if something is the tiniest bit out of place. You can see how this would be a good quality in a controller but not necessarily in the average Joe. In fact, I later knew a controller who was convinced that everyone really was watching him. His paranoia extended to threatening visitors who brought cameras to the control tower. His colleagues did their best to get along with his little quirks because he could flush out a backlog of departures faster than anyone.