I read in the newspapers today that Lehman Brothers have collapsed after filing for Bankruptcy. Whilst it is sad that a 150 year old business has ended I have little sympathy for the one or two people I knew that worked in the offices in London. Having lived in Canary Wharf, the home of Lehman Brothers UK office, from 2002-2007 I was often berated and verbally abused by the two people I rather unfortunately met on several occasions who worked there.
I am not a suit and tie man, I like to dress casually and in Canary Wharf that was akin to being a Scottish fan in the home enclosure at Wembley, isolated, alone and rather unwelcome. The area had a plethora of bars that I would like to meet friends in that travelled from other parts of London but these bars always populated by men in expensive suits with wallets the size of a hippo’s testicle and no matter what time of the day the conversation would always be around work.
Sometimes these ,wanuits’ (Wankers in suits) would look down at you like a piece of shit on their shoe and utter the immortal line “And what do you do?”, when you tell them they would snigger and then would follow with “How much do you earn?”, like what the fuck does it matter?
These people have been in a business for years where money and fat corporate bonuses were the only thing that mattered, they often portrayed themselves as being the most important people in society, interested in assisting those who were financially worse off but in reality they were just using that as an excuse to step up the corporate ladder and status means everything to some.
Some of these people worked for organisations where people’s finances and savings were at stake. People whose money these wanuits were gambling with day after day. Forget the money that these people had set aside for retirement, forget their daily struggle day to day in this financial quagmire we are slowly sinking into but as long as the bonus purchased another Armani suit then all is well ? Time after time reading these CEO’s of companies awarding themselves six figure bonuses when there are so many people hitting the breadline. Maybe its because I come from a working class background, may parents have worked all their lives and still do. I am careful with money, I like to know that all the little luxuries I have in life have been purchased through hard work and sweat.
As I see these people crying into their empty champagne glasses, their cardboard boxes full of their Lehman possessions I have little sympathy. I have lost a job through redundancy and just dusted myself down to find another one, it’s not the end of the world. Now that these wanuits have been knocked off their high horse, maybe just maybe they will understand what it feels like to be a rat in the race we call life.