Dignity Without a Rank Table

Hierarchy is useful for some tasks.

On a ship, in an operating theatre and at an emergency site you cannot put every decision to a general vote. You need authority, responsibility and a clear chain of command.

But a post describes a role, not the quality of a person.

A boss may see the overall task better and understand the specific work worse. A subordinate may hold rare knowledge and have no right to the final decision. The system needs both positions.

Obsequiousness and contempt appear when a working hierarchy is turned into a table of human worth.

Basic respect is worth keeping regardless of status:

• do not humiliate;
• do not demand personal worship;
• do not treat service staff as invisible;
• do not confuse expensive clothes with competence;
• do not treat poverty as proof of vice.

Respect does not mean admiration. It does not have to be earned by brilliant achievements. It is the default mode of interaction, which can be restricted after harmful behaviour.

A person holding a high post deserves the same manners as everyone else. Not more sacred and not less.

The test is simple: how someone talks to people who have no influence on his career. A shop foreman who listens to a fitter about a strange noise in a bearing usually learns about the breakdown a month ahead. One who is uncomfortable accepting a technical correction from below learns about it from the report on the stopped line. The fitter does not become the senior one: the decision to stop the line is still the foreman’s. He only makes it knowing about the bearing.

A hierarchy determines whose word is final, not whose word is correct. Where those two things are glued together, the system loses information at exactly the place where it appears — at the bottom, at the hands.