The professor was giving us protocols for formal interaction. He said it was important to introduce people of higher rank first when introducing multiple people. As an intuitive Socialist, I was annoyed by all of these, since everyone is a comrade. However, some of these were worse than others:
The order, by rank and status, was as follows:
- Bishops before priests
- Prime ministers before cabinet ministers
- Bosses before employees
- Teachers before students
- Parents before children
- Men before women
…What the serious fuck
Proposed protocols for introducing people:
- Mathematicians before physicists
- Nonhumans before humans (this is courteous to your dog and will avoid all kinds of social awkwardness when the aliens visit)
- Polytheists before monotheists before atheists (the proper point to introduce pantheists is hotly disputed)
- Alphabetically by city of origin
- order of who would probably win in a fistfight (if uncertain, invite the parties to have a fistfight)
- order of number of mortal enemies (ascending)