On hierarchy

It's funny the way people just naturally establish a pecking order. If you left a group alone in a room for an hour I'm sure by the time you checked on them they'd have a ranking system sorted out based on their level of attractiveness, or age, or perhaps who had eggs for breakfast.

My company is probably similar to many out there in that personal prestige is often based on your length of employment. Our employee numbers are issued numerically, so it's possible to tell by this ID approximately how long they've been stalking the halls, so to speak.

It's so prevalent past employees who've left and come back to the company will often ask if they can have their old ID number back, so as not to lose their place in the hierarchy!

At school, it was a different story. I still to this day have no idea what attributes the pecking order was based upon. I am beginning to suspect however that it was a combination of level of confidence, lack of nerdliness and money. Strange for a small country town, but there you go.

These days the only other hierarchy I'm a part of is my family. Not sure where I rank there, but I'm definately #1 daughter. Mainly because I'm the only one!