A little power, used straight

You don't have to run a company to hold power over someone. You set the schedule, so a server's whole week bends around what you decide. You train the new hire, so your patience or your sighs teach them what this place is. You take the calls, so a stranger's refund, their appointment, their bad day, runs through your hands. The power is real even when it's small, and small power has a way of going to the head faster than large.

Marcus Aurelius ran an empire and still warned himself daily about exactly this: "Take care that thou art not made into a Caesar, that thou art not dyed with this dye... Keep thyself then simple, good, pure, serious... a friend of justice... kind" (Meditations 6.30, Long). Dyed with the dye. The little tyrant in the break room, the supervisor who enjoys saying no — nobody chose that on purpose. The dye just soaked in, one unchecked moment at a time.

This is the week's move: be fair precisely where you could get away with not being. Power is a test disguised as a perk. The schedule, the junior, the customer at your mercy — each one asks the same quiet question of who you are.