Its not stated explicitly as a theme, but one idea conveyed by the story is that we tend to over estimate our tolerance for abuse, while simultaneously struggling to anticipate how trauma will manifest. Of course its just a story, but you won't know for sure that you can endure it until you've really lived it.
The story pretty nicely hinted at the point that romanticizing the punch is bad. When the protagonist did finally something against the suffering he was immediately reprimanded.
And of course the absurdity of the physical abuse is a mere literary device, the heavy hitter (oof, sorry) is the emotional one. (As the story spells it out. It's cPTSD from struggling in this unfamiliar world every day, with not knowing what exactly is going to happen, not being able to connect to humans, being alone.)
Maybe the darkest aspect is how sidelined any support is. Spouse? Only mentioned as a healthcare package. An old friend? Good for telling the truth, but that did not help at all! Lots of supervisors are dicks.
I think socially we have mental-model of what a "good" job, or "good" life is, and this model is largely based on certain capitalistic/individualistic assumptions.
We tell ourselves that being isolated, feeling useless, feeling blamed, being punched in the stomache once doesn't really matter and aren't real problems if we get paid a lot.
So we save up a lot of money, but we aren't happy (despite insisting we should be), and ironically no amount of money can purchase back what we gave up -- a sense of purpose, respect, community, etc.
A friend once asked "What would be your ideal job if you had F-you money?" and my answer was "The field wouldn't matter that much, just a job where I had coworkers who genuinely liked and respected each other and cared about what we did." He couldn't understand me and kept repeating "No what field though, if you could choose?"
