And I answered. I think you're spooked because you assume as given that the relationship between employer and employee is antagonistic and holy fuck, boy, that's the wrong goddamn way to live.

One of my midwives bought a house nine months ago. Keeps me up at night because if I can't find her work? She's on the goddamn street. Another one of my midwives had to go to war with her school to get her thesis accepted. I counted up my favors and lined up a Columbia law professor to unleash the Dogs of War on her school because fucking hell if she can't get through this she's burned her career. This whole COVID thing? My A Number One concern is how the fuck I'm going to keep feeding my employees enough work to cover their family needs because I have like four employees whose boyfriends and spouses are 100% out of work and have been for quite some time.

The human thing is to recognize that you have an agreement with other humans whereby they do stuff for you and you do stuff for them and that basic cooperation is the fundamental basis for civilization. But our work arrangements have become so fucking inhuman that we're taking as a basis this Dickensian poorhouse mentality whereby we shouldn't have asked for more fucking gruel or some shit. If my employees are having shitty lives? They're going to make shitty employees. That's the sociopathic way to look at it and you'll note that even from a sociopathic basis, this is a positive-sum game. So why do employers treat their employees like shit? Because when you're big enough they're cogs. And cogs are replaceable. And your business is no longer made of people, it's made of quarterly reports and stock buybacks and what humans are left are human despite the machine but let's never lose sight of the fact that it's a machine, that it shouldn't run this way, that it doesn't have to, and the minute you accept the fact that work is supposed to be torture you're asking to be tortured every day for the rest of your life.

And frankly? Speaking as an entrepreneur with six employees? you're fucking worthless to me. Your motivations are pathologically damaged. I can't even get anything out of you until you learn that my hand is out to pet you, not to strike you.

Shit was fucking broken when I left in 2007 and it's gotten more broken since. The breakdown has been radically, breathtakingly accelerated with COVID and the center will not hold. The only way you can live through this is by choosing to, and you need to choose not to default to an antagonistic relationship with your employer. And if they choose to have an antagonistic relationship with you?

Leave. Leave as soon as you are able.

It is a dominant/subordinate relationship and that can easily become antagonistic especially in a bad work environment or with employees who don't feel safe. And it's very reasonable to note that employees may not feel safe in work environments due to no fault of their employer -- previous bad experiences, trust issues, lack of accepting the self leading to greater insecurities, etc.

I see why you would have used that characterization. At a good workplace, the relationship isn't antagonistic. But it easily can be.