That, and her own childhood. We tend to relativize bad things in terms of what we've experienced ourselves. If I had seen my father beat the teeth out of my mothers mouth with a hammer I'm not so sure I'd be up in arms about somebody losing their job...
That depends. If you think that somebody who feels limited empathy with someone who lost their job (and quickly got another one) is "irreparably damaged for life", then perhaps yes.
But you could think of it in the opposite way as well: Perhaps our empathy should be directed more towards those that have it toughest in life, and less towards those with whom we can easily identify? In that case I'd say it's the 4chan guys that are "irreparably damaged", and the HN crowd obsessed with Hank's restitution... well, "damaged" but perhaps not "irreparably". ;)
