October 17, 2008--Overheard On The M1

The M1 bus on Broadway goes to South Ferry, a couple of stops past Wall Street.

As usual, we caught the 8:33 at 9th Street. Our plan was to get off at Spring Street in Soho and then pop into Balthazar for coffee; but a conversation taking place a couple of seats away from us, which was impossible not to overhear, was so morbidly and sadly interesting that we went past our intended stop.

Sitting across from each other and thus needing to talk quite loudly to be heard over the traffic noise were two acquaintances who work downtown. It seems, though they didn’t not mention any names, at a couple of the largest of the remaining banks.

“I was told yesterday,” one said, “that in my group I won’t be getting laid off for at least two months.” He didn’t seem all that disturbed by the news.

His friend said, “I’ll be out of my job by November first.” She too did not appear to be overly upset. They were both surprisingly calm about their circumstances.

He said, “Some of the people who have already lost their jobs tell me they’re going to take time off until January and then begin to start looking for a new job.”

“Don’t you think,” she said, “that in the current environment they should be looking now?” He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe they have a lot saved up and can afford to take a break?”

“Not really,” he said, “most of their savings were in 401Ks made up of their bank’s stock and now that’s sort of worthless.”

“Maybe they’re young and have lots of time to recover.”

“Not really. They’re about my age and most of them have children in private school or college.”

“Wow,” she said. My thoughts exactly I said to myself.

“So, what about you?” she asked. “They told you yesterday that you have maybe about two months or so before they let you go. What are you planning to do?”

“To tell you the truth I’ve known for a few months that this was coming but I’ve been in a state of denial. In fact, my partner and I just got back from two weeks in the south of France. We blew quite a lot of money with the dollar still so weak.”

“Wow,” she said again, and I hoped they didn’t see me nodding my head in agreement.

“Life is short,” he said, still nonplussed. “But there is still one good thing about all of this.”

“What’s that,” she asked, looking at him skeptically.

“At least when you go looking for another job they won’t ask you why you left your old one.” With that he laughed so loud that everyone on the M1 turned to look at him.

Rona and I got off at Canal Street and walked back to Balthazar. By the time we got there it was about ten after nine and all the tables were taken. So we had to wait. It’s quite a large place and happily it took only five minutes to be seated.

Footnote: At, Balth, two scrambled eggs cost $8.00. A bowl of Granola ten bucks.