[robocat]

> What do you do?

The first question when you meet someone is often to measure your status.

In New Zealand, different cities had different questions. Auckland: where do you live (using suburb as a proxy for status), Christchurch: what school did you go to (status used to be highly linked to your high school), Wellington: what do you do (a lot of people move to Wellington to work and it has a very wide variety of professional and government jobs).

It depends somewhat on context since often status is implied by the situation you've met someone. I've even had people straight up ask: how much do you earn.