One aspect of adult life that has (thankfully) passed me by is office hierarchy. I got a taste of it this morning when I went out to buy a new chair for my desk.

Office chairs are ranked according to seniority and comfort. Apparently you aren’t allowed to have one without the other.

So a junior typist gets a glorified stool with a backrest so low that any attempt to lean on it will cause irreperable damage to the coccyx.  Work hard at your keyboard for a decade or so, and you can be promoted to a full-size typist’s chair with manual lift.

All typists dream to be operators, though. I don’t know what an operator does – but they get ergonomic seats with plastic armrests.

As I was buying a chair for my home office, I decided to promote myself to "Entry Level Management." For this I get swivel and tilt, height adjustment, and real leather trim. But if I work hard and achieve all my targets, I should be entitled to an executive chair at some point in the future. This will have headrests, leather arms, a footrest and real wood trim.