That’s the thing about the credit crunch. Just when you think you’re over the worst, it inevitably comes back to serve you with a cold piece of humility pie.

Up until several weeks ago, I was relieved to be the shoulder to cry on for all my friends in the City who had been axed. But a dark cloud soon began to form over my charmed little cubicle. I found out my team was in fact far from immune to the slaughterhouse and our heads were about to be the next to roll. Sure, I’m tough. I’m ambitious. I can even be scary. But I was scared s**tless. My waking hours were spent with the nauseating feeling that I would end up destitute in this gargantuan, prohibitively expensive city. Our team eyeballed each other with terror, wondering who would be first, second or 100th to be voted off the island.

It was almost inconceivable that our hard-hitting director could be the chosen one. This FT-carrying idiot had very few interests outside the swirl of our investment bank – except his family and a mistress, of course. Glued to his BlackBerry, he lived on a diet of trade confirmations and expensive business trips.

But then ironically, when the dreaded Day of Reckoning came, my team and I remained with our heads intact while he was fired. Even with a commitment to his job bordering on psychosis, he was losing money, as a lot of people are these days. But he had lost a bit more than others around him – including myself, luckily. What followed was not pretty. When he would not accept the news, security helped him check into reality by escorting him from the premises and confiscating both his security pass and his BlackBerry.

Then a few days ago, I was at Starbucks near Bank station when I saw him walking past carrying a briefcase. When I asked my colleagues where he was working, it turned out that he hadn’t told his wife, kids or mistress about his tragic event, and commuted to the City every day as if nothing had happened.

How long can he pretend for? The guy is under pressure to maintain a lifestyle. But then, aren’t we all? Success is certainly a trap. But it seems that, for big City hitters, humility pie is not the easiest to digest.