Chapter 7: A Thousand Petty Cuts

Chapter 7: A Thousand Petty Cuts

The alliance between Kaelen and Dave wasn't sealed with a handshake or a grand declaration. It was forged in quiet moments, in shared glances across the noisy workshop, in conversations held in low tones by the tyre-fitting machine. Kaelen’s act of defiance with the copper coins had been a thunderclap, a direct and open challenge. But what followed was far more insidious, a campaign fought not with thunder, but with whispers and shadows. It began, as all effective insurgencies do, with the planting of a single, simple idea.

“It’s the control,” Kaelen said to Dave one morning, as they both worked on the same Scania rig. He wasn’t looking at Dave, but at the intricate wiring loom in his hands. “He needs to feel in control of everything. His snacks, your change, Geoff’s schedule. That’s his power. If a man like that starts to feel like he’s losing control…” Kaelen let the sentence hang, leaving the conclusion unspoken but perfectly understood.

Dave nodded slowly, a thoughtful expression replacing his usual weary frown. He looked over at Thompson’s glass-walled office, where the manager was loudly berating a young apprentice over some minor infraction. “He’d go spare,” Dave murmured, a flicker of something new—a dangerous sort of hope—in his eyes.

Kaelen didn’t need to say another word. He had aimed the weapon. Dave, with his years of experience navigating the workshop’s social currents, would pull the trigger. They were the catalysts, the architects of a chaos they would never touch with their own hands.

The first cut was almost comically petty. Thompson owned a brand-new, top-of-the-line digital torque wrench. He kept it in a pristine case on his desk, a gleaming symbol of his authority that he rarely, if ever, used. He simply liked to possess it. One Tuesday morning, it was gone.

The eruption was predictable. Thompson tore his office apart, his bellows of rage echoing across the workshop floor. He stormed out, his face a blotchy red, accusing everyone of theft. He made Geoff line the mechanics up, demanding they empty their pockets like common criminals. The exercise yielded nothing but resentment and a handful of loose change—a sight that only seemed to make Thompson angrier.

The wrench reappeared the next day. An apprentice, with a perfectly straight face, found it nestled among the milk cartons in the canteen fridge, a thin layer of condensation beading on its chrome finish. Who put it there? No one knew. How did it get there? A complete mystery. Thompson, holding the freezing-cold wrench, looked from one blank face to another, his eyes burning with a helpless, paranoid fury. For the first time, the mechanics didn't just cower from his rage; they exchanged tiny, almost imperceptible smiles behind his back. The fear was beginning to be seasoned with contempt.

The next cut was deeper. A message was phoned in from a critical parts supplier: the delivery of a bespoke gearbox for a priority job was going to be delayed by forty-eight hours. The apprentice who took the call was young, perpetually nervous, and terrified of Thompson. Dave saw him scribbling the note. Later, Dave walked past him and asked, “Big rush on that Henderson haulage job, isn’t it? Gaffer will go mental if that’s not out on time.” He said it casually, sympathetically, a simple statement of fact. But the seed of fear was planted.

The paper note with the supplier's message never made it to Thompson's desk. It was ‘forgotten’. Two days later, a furious logistics manager from Henderson Haulage was on the phone to Thompson, demanding to know why his truck wasn't ready and why he hadn’t been informed of the delay. The call was loud enough for half the workshop to hear Thompson’s panicked, blustering excuses. He tried to blame the supplier, but the logistics manager was having none of it. “They told us they called you Tuesday morning!” the voice on the phone roared.

Thompson slammed the phone down and tore into the workshop, demanding to know who took the message. The apprentice, when confronted, looked genuinely terrified and confused. “I… I don’t remember, gaffer. I’m so sorry. I’ve been so snowed under…” His fear was real, his apology heartfelt. It was impossible to prove malice. It just looked like incompetence. And since Thompson was the manager, it was his department’s incompetence. Geoff, who had witnessed the whole exchange, made a quiet note on his clipboard, his expression unreadable but troubled.

The cuts grew bolder, the silent rebellion spreading like a virus. The master stroke was the scheduling. A complex engine rebuild for a major fleet client was booked in. The job sheet, which passed through several hands before landing on the mechanic's bench, had the deadline written as “EOD Monday.” But the ink was smudged, just slightly. It could have been a Monday. Or it could have been the previous Friday.

The mechanic assigned the job, a quiet veteran named Alistair, looked at the sheet. He showed it to the man at the next bay. “Does that say Friday or Monday to you?” he asked. The other mechanic squinted. “Could be either. Better safe than sorry. Looks more like Monday.”

Alistair, following this peer-approved interpretation, worked at a steady, unhurried pace. Thompson, buried under a mountain of self-inflicted paperwork and still stewing over the missing wrench and the phantom phone call, never checked the physical job sheet. He relied on his digital calendar, which was correct. He assumed the work was on schedule.

On Friday afternoon, the client's transport manager arrived to collect the vehicle. Thompson, all smiles and false bonhomie, led him onto the floor, only to find the engine still in a hundred pieces around Alistair’s bay. The client’s face went from expectant to thunderous. Alistair, when questioned, simply produced the smudged job sheet. “Deadline’s Monday, gaffer,” he said with unimpeachable innocence.

Thompson stared at the smudge, his mind racing, trying to find someone, anyone, to blame. But there was no one. It was a smudge. It was a misreading. It was a chain of tiny, plausible errors. It was an accident. But the cumulative effect was catastrophic. It was a failure of management, a failure of oversight, a failure of his entire system of control.

By the end of the week, Mark Thompson was a changed man. The blustering tyrant was still there, but he was now frayed at the edges. His hair was unkempt, his tie permanently loosened. He stalked the workshop floor not with authority, but with a twitchy, paranoid energy, seeing conspiracy in every quiet conversation, insubordination in every glance. His shouting became more frequent but less focused, the scattergun blasts of a man who knows he is under attack but cannot see his enemy.

The authority he commanded through fear had begun to erode, replaced by a dark, collective amusement. The thousand petty cuts were working. They weren’t healing. They were festering.

From his workstation, Kaelen watched the slow, methodical dismantling. He and Dave never spoke of it directly, but the understanding was there. Kaelen had provided the spark with his cascade of copper, and together, they had fanned it, watching as others, emboldened by that first act of defiance, began to add their own kindling to the fire. Thompson had built his kingdom on a foundation of fear and intimidation. Now, he was being undone by a torque wrench in a fridge, a forgotten note, and a smudge of ink. The structure was groaning, and Kaelen knew it was only a matter of time before it came crashing down completely.