Or the purchasing goes fine, you buy a tin with the longer expiry, get home and then decide you actually fancy that for dinner, but that means you could have purchased the tin due to expire tomorrow, cue 30 minutes of deliberating whether to go back and purchase the other tin, go back to the store, the tins which were to expire tomorrow are now sold out, you feel guilty so you ask staff where the tins have gone, they just point at the ones with the longer expiry and don't get what the problem is. Now do you return the tin you brought to return as you shouldn't have purchased it in the first place. The cycle goes on and on and often you need reassurance to break this cycle, someone being with you to say "the other customers would have bought tins with longer expiry if they needed it" could be enough to break the endless feelings of doubt and guilt.
OCD isn't all about repeating actions or doing things in certain orders, a lot of it is irrational guilt or intrusive thoughts. An OCD sufferer can often take a lot longer to perform a normal task just because of the amount of doubt in all of the steps, everything has to be confirmed and re-confirmed, either physically (flicking a switch) or mentally (making a decision).
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