[apenwarr]

Not exactly a dick: you're intensely conscious of the social hierarchy. I've noticed that some people just are, and some people just aren't.

What you do with it is what makes you a dick or doesn't. And a lot of that is under your conscious control. The people who don't care about the social hierarchy are just lucky because they don't have to worry about it.

Now, using words like "social inferior" is probably a bad idea if you want to not make people aware that you're aware of the social hierarchy :)

On the other hand, I'm much more concerned about your use of the word "incompetence" above than about your use of the word "social inferior." Sometimes spilling a drink is just an accident, not a sign of incompetence. We've all spilled drinks in our lives; people who serve them for a living have surely spilled more. You can get into a lot of trouble if you can't tell the difference between incompetence and bad luck.