If you don’t need to sit at the “right” table, you can sit anywhere. That’s freedom.

A hierarchy of tables only has power over the people trying to place well in it. Needing a particular seat means handing whoever controls that seat a say in your afternoon, your mood and who you are allowed to talk to. Not needing it is not a pose of being above it; it just gives you the whole room back.

Sit somewhere different once this week, with no announcement and no point being made. Go where the conversation is actually interesting. It is a small experiment and it tells you how much of that ranking was ever real.