Fragile Authority
Most bad management doesn’t scream.
It doesn’t throw staplers or end in dramatic HR exits. It looks reasonable. Normal. Strategic. It hides behind alignment meetings, vague feedback, shifting expectations, and language that sounds supportive while quietly transferring risk downward.
Fragile Authority is a clear-eyed examination of how modern management fails in ordinary workplaces and how those failures get normalized until capable people start blaming themselves.
Through five linked essays, cinnamon names the patterns many workers recognize but struggle to articulate: fragile authority disguised as control, absence framed as busyness, fear formalized through performance plans, and “family” language that erodes boundaries while pretending to create belonging.
This is not a guide on how to fix broken systems.
It is not advice on how to survive them better.
It is documentation.
For anyone who has done everything right and still felt destabilized, invisible, or quietly erased, this book offers something rarer than motivation: accuracy.
