Trauma isn’t just for life threatening stuff, it’s essentially like having an event or series of events cause a switch to be installed in your brain which activates a feeling or a negative thought process you don’t really control. In a life threatening situation that feeling might be an overwhelming sense of danger and fear for your life or mistrust of people. If it’s loss related it is crushing reminders of your loss and how your life has changed.

In this instance I would imagine it is something more like : the uninteruptable thought process that other people don’t see you as fully human and that you are not a being worthy of basic respect and that something about you in particular invites abuse.

Something like that could be triggered just by showing up to your job and interrupting that thought process takes a lot of work because with trauma it’s basically instant. Working to disassociate the trigger from the feeling while still having to work to support yourself in jobs that reinforce that feeling would be hell. A lot of people who are living paycheck to paycheck are really harmed by just losing a few hours of work so even taking the time to leave and find a new job could create outsized financial issues.