Forum Post: Letter to Lloyd C. Blankfein, Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs

Hi Lloyd,

Before this whole economic meltdown thing, I was a cater waiter at one of your Goldman Sachs Christmas parties. You know--the one where you had Harry Connick Jr. come and sing for you while you enjoyed filet mignon? Yeah, that one. We cater waiters were pretty shocked when you made us all leave the floor during Harry Connick Jr.'s performance. You see, working as a cater waiter is pretty exhausting and thankless, but one of the few perks is that we get to enjoy the entertainment as we fill your wine glasses. Or at least, we got to do that at every other party I worked. At your Christmas party, we stood in an unheated tent in the back and discussed whether Goldman Sachs was more like Scrooge or The Grinch. By the way, we all knew that you had insisted on $10,000 worth of cloth cocktail napkins (to be fair, I guess your soft hands could have been damaged by paper) and that at the end of the night you planned to throw them all away. We saw your arrogance and your waste, and shook our heads. None of us even had health insurance. But we were happy to have a job, even a crappy job catering to the likes of you.

Little did we know that a few short years later, we cater waiters would be bailing out your industry with our hard earned taxes. We saw you enjoying the fruits of your privatized profits during the good times. We saw it up close. But then, the consequences of your risky behavior started to hit, and all of a sudden, socializing that risk started to look pretty good, didn't it? If you had at least responded with some humility and gratitude, if you had at least decided to take a good hard look at your industry and make some real changes, the American people wouldn't be so pissed at you right now. Instead, we see the same greed, recklessness and waste that you indulged in before this whole mess. The only difference is that now, we're not watching from the catering room floor, because we don't have jobs. We're watching from the streets because our homes have been foreclosed on.

I don't know how you can see the real suffering that is going on in this country and feel good about cashing your multi-million dollar bonus checks. Maybe you're choosing not to see the people who are suffering--just as you chose not to see the people making and serving your food at that Christmas party years ago. But I can tell you that we are here and we are very, very angry. You stole from us, and you already have so much. Shame on you. Shame. On. You.

I don't have a whole lot of faith in you or your industry, but I would still argue that it's not too late to take some responsibility for your behavior and make some real changes to the way you do business. If you do not, the people will continue to make themselves heard.

Sincerely,

Christianna