“An optimist is a banker who irons five shirts on a Sunday evening.” Though this is a stale joke by now, it casts light on the repercussions this Wall Street-induced crisis is having on the common man. For instance, since I was fired, I have cut down on some expenses, like buying the FT daily (London’s weather depresses me enough), extravagant dinners (take-away seems so yummy!) and, of course, laundry – one, I don’t use as many shirts these days, and two, I have tried to wash some of them myself. (If I had my way, I would love to share with you my newly acquired knowledge on which detergent works best for which kind of tap water, but for now, let me get back to the dirty laundry issue.)

As a banker, I was paid enough and I was prepared to be fired. However, a laundry man who does a good job and makes enough money to lead a contented life should feel terribly unlucky that his business is going down through no fault of his own. He didn’t earn as much money, didn’t take on excessive leverage or risk, and yet his occupation is inextricably linked to the vagaries of banking. How unfortunate!

So that brings me to the question – is any job safe?

I did two rotations during my 10-week summer internship at Lehman Brothers in 2007. The first was on a structuring desk in securitized (bad word, I know) finance, and the second five-week rotation was on an interest rate trading desk.

The second rotation was a disaster. I started just when the first signs of the credit crisis started to emerge. The senior trader refused to look me in the eye except when he urgently wanted a coffee or a sandwich from the cafeteria. I sat next to him for five weeks, researched on interest rate strategies and quietly stared at his trading screens all day. Since I never once asked a stupid question or mixed up his lunch order, he gave me a decent evaluation. But it was securitized finance which gave me the offer.

I turned that down and instead opted to return this year as a generalist associate. As the crunch worsened, I congratulated myself for my excellent foresight: I would probably have been laid off even before joining Lehman had I taken the securitized finance offer. By comparison, I considered that I’d opted for the ‘safe job’. But as it turned out, it wasn’t safe enough.

All through my brief stint at Lehman, every single senior manager whom we met during training told us – no better time to join this industry, don’t worry, you guys are fresh out of business school, you are a cheap resource, nobody will touch you. But we, the first-year associates, were the first to be fired by Lehman after they filed for bankruptcy.

That leads me to conclude that irrespective of where you are, when the stuff hits the fan, you, my friend, will be on the firing line. When you can’t see the light, don’t get all arrogant, the train might be right behind you!