Hampton resents Harmony for leaving to work in the Kier branch of Lumon, for four reasons that work in tandem:

• He knows Harmony came up with the designs for the severance chip, and that it was her work that allowed the Eagans to shut down the factory and restructure the company around the idea of a severed floor in a different, public facing building, which the ether factory could not be.
• That company restructuring resulted in the factory being shut down, people being out of jobs and the employees who worked there suffering the medical sequelae of having worked since childhood in the factory without any help from Lumon’s pharmaceutical products.
• He resents Sissy for encouraging Harmony to join the Myrtle Eagan school for girls, both because it took her away from him and because it ultimately led to the factory shutting down, with the whole town falling through the cracks except for Sissy, who was credited for Harmony’s upbringing. The only one still living by the nine (principles) after what Lumon did to them all.
• Harmony references their friendship and puppy-love through Lumon language (chums), to which Hampton replies that [it was] child fucking labor. As Harmony talks of Kier and Imogene meeting as colleagues in the ether mill and taking to each other still as colleagues, Hampton replies cynically and with complicity “was she hacking up a lung at the time?” (possibly implying that part of the reason Harmony was encouraged to leave was the respiratory issues exposure to the chemicals gave her mother.)

It’s Harmony’s admission that she is not working with Lumon, that was she did was bad enough to be surveilled, that ultimately earns Hampton’s trust and makes him keep watch while she’s at Sissy’s. Sissy mentions selling Harmony’s childhood belongings to the poor, making the poor pay for goods that were not theirs to have in the first place, to use their meagre salary to pay for someone else’s things she didn’t even get to enjoy. The way the laborer at the factory makes the product, and the client has to pay to enjoy it, but this separation between maker and user is necessary for the generation of surplus for the patron. But despite Harmony’s pretense of disdain when she says it’s shameful that he sells the vitriol, she kisses him for it.

Hampton doesn’t sell drugs, he gives them away. He doesn’t charge for the coffee, he doesn’t charge for the huff. Lumon gave him and Harmony vitriol as child laborers to get through 8 hour vat-stirrings, even as they mirrored Kier and Imogene. Vitriol is a Lumon product that Lumon can’t cash in being used to mitigate the damage working for Lumon did for the people of the town, it’s an anaesthetic. Harmony says to Sissy “you gave him his thirst for (the huff)”, and it was Lumon who created a dependency, who cut them off of their payroll and safety and substance access when they sent their staff to Kier.