Chapter 64

The pattern here is devastatingly simple: give someone a tiny bit of power over another person, and watch how quickly they'll use it to humiliate. Stubb isn't the captain or even a particularly important officer—he's just a man with a whale steak who can make an elderly cook hop back and forth on painful knees. This is the Petty Power pattern, where small advantages become weapons of degradation. The mechanism works through accumulated frustration. Stubb takes orders from Ahab, defers to Starbuck, risks his life hunting whales—and finds his only outlet in tormenting someone who can't fight back. The cook becomes his pressure valve. Notice how Stubb doesn't just want his steak cooked differently; he wants a performance, a sermon, a show of submission. The cruelty IS the point. Fleece understands this perfectly, which is why his 'sermon' contains coded resistance—telling sharks to share equally while being forced to serve. You see this pattern everywhere. The charge nurse who makes CNAs redo perfectly clean rooms. The shift supervisor at the warehouse who times bathroom breaks. The office manager who schedules mandatory meetings during lunch. The customer who keeps sending food back just to watch servers scramble. These aren't people with real power—they're people with just enough authority to make someone else's day miserable. During COVID, we saw this explode: people screaming at grocery clerks about masks, berating healthcare workers, finding their only sense of control in making service workers suffer. When you recognize this pattern, you have options. Document everything—petty tyrants often violate actual policies in their power plays. Find allies; Fleece's whispered curses remind us that others see what's happening. Most importantly, remember that their cruelty comes from their own powerlessness. This isn't about you. You can comply minimally without performing enthusiasm, saving your energy for what matters. Sometimes, like Fleece, you can embed resistance in compliance—following orders in ways that subtly expose the absurdity. When you can spot the Petty Power pattern, predict that it comes from the person's own frustration, and navigate it without losing yourself—that's amplified intelligence.