scenes from a meltdown

Sphinx Patterson, Voice of the People

It’s easy to be dismissive of the pain Wall Streeters are feeling today, to gloss over it with Schadenfreude: Oooh, so they’re going to lose their third home. So they’re not going to be able to afford fancy window treatments. Whoop-di-do. But we ought not to forget that the events of this past weekend will also take a toll on the little people. And Sphinx Patterson, an employee in the London office “who teaches a so-called body-pump and step class every Monday afternoon at Lehman’s seventh-floor gym,” according to Bloomberg, is emerging as the voice of these people. When Sphinx showed up to work today, he told the news service, he found the gym shut, the piles of towels already disposed of, and the people raw and vulnerable. “It’s not just the high-fliers who are losing their jobs,” he explained to the Evening Standard when they caught up with him having a pint in the canteen. “I spoke to a receptionist and she was packing up her pens,” he said, adding that people were walking around “in shock.” “Girls are crying, blokes hugging each other. People don’t know what to do.” We’re sure dude will find some way of comforting them. They don’t call him “Sphinx” for nothing.

Sphinx Patterson [Facebook, with truly amazing photo that is too small for us to reproduce]
Lehman Workers Clear Desks, Weep After Bankruptcy [Bloomberg]
4,000 City jobs axed as Lehman folds [Evening Standard]

Sphinx Patterson, Voice of the People