Poison Part 6 — It’s just one little pill.

On reflection I would say that meeting Blair’s family was a mistake. I will explain why and I’d l like you to work with me on this.

Have you ever noticed that when you enter a room with three or four others, a hierarchy rapidly develops. In the work environment it is very evident. If I enter a boardroom with the new director of research, a visiting lab technician (24 years old and fresh out of university) from our head office in Germany, and an administrative assistant who’s been with the company for a couple of years, in seconds we all know where each other stands in the pecking order. I am basically second on the totem pole, beneath the director, and the other two people in the room will defer to the director because of his position, and myself because I’ve been with the company for ten years.

Now, imagine the situation with one small change. Let’s say the visiting lab technician is also the company founder’s son. A different hierarchy would be established. Particularly if the director and the son are both male, and the administrative assistant and I are both female. In this example the pecking order is dictated by the relationship to the company, however there’s also something else in play. There’s a sexual hierarchy. The two men, and the two women. As much as we might try to create a workplace without such demarcations, we are also humans…