The key is that Clara was not punishing an error.

She was removing a danger.

Patrick and Karl had not made a single uncharacteristic mistake that a reprimand could correct; they had revealed a settled disposition, a habit of contempt, that made them actively unsafe in the work they did.

Every shift they worked, they stood at the door of a hospitality company and decided who was worthy of welcome and who should be sent away, and they made that decision, as they had just demonstrated, on the basis of a glance at a person’s clothes.

Clara did not know how many tired travelers, how many grieving mothers, how many ordinary people who did not look wealthy enough to matter, those two men had already turned away over the years, humiliated and dismissed, people who, unlike Clara, simply left and never revealed the injury.