For me, it was when COVID began. I was a store manager for a retro video game store. All of my employees expressed discomfort once things started hitting the fan. This was like 2 weeks before all the shutdowns began and before we knew anything about it. I was run so thin because in my heart of hearts, I could never force someone to come to work if they ever felt unsafe, so I covered a lot of shifts during those couple weeks and made it known that no one’s jobs were in jeopardy over it. The owner would treat me like a pushover for it, trying every possible way to get everyone back in the store. I finally took a stand and went on sort of a “strike” with my employees, which resulted in an online meeting where all of us outnumbered him and voted to close the store indefinitely until we knew things were safe. After the shutdowns began, I was still required to go to the store every other day even though no travel was permitted to ensure no break-ins or theft occurred. I was also required every day to attend an online meeting with the other managers and the owners to bullshit around and just say “Yep, things are still closed, this sucks” for an hour and call it a day. The straw that finally broke the camel’s back, however, was when he attempted to open us back up at the height of things when there were hundreds of deaths per day. He tried to say we were an “essential financial business” because folks could sell their video games. From that moment on, I saw the true nature of capitalism in the flesh.