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I do and I'm glad it has opened his eyes.
"It was a hard reality at first," he says. "I used to see unemployed people and think they were lazy, that it was all on them. Now it's happened to me."
From Ordering Steak and Lobster to Serving It
by Mary Pilon
Monday, June 1, 2009
Carlos Araya used to order lobster, filet mignon and $200 bottles of red wine at the Palm Restaurant in midtown Manhattan.
Now, he seats customers at its Tribeca branch.
Mr. Araya, 38 years old, lost his job in 2007 as a crude oil trader on the New York Mercantile Exchange. After visiting dozens of headhunters with no luck, he applied in August 2008 to be a host at the Palm to support his wife, two young daughters and mortgage payments. His salary has plunged from $200,000 to $25,000.
If the financial crisis was the flood, then the Arayas are one of the families standing in the stagnant waters left behind. Some former Wall Street employees, highly trained and accustomed to comfortable salaries, are having trouble translating their specialized skills to other fields that pay well, and instead find themselves forced to accept low-wage work. Now, Mr. Araya is on the brink of losing it all and is doubtful that he will ever return to Wall Street.
And he isn't alone. Nearly 25,000 jobs have been lost in New York City's financial sector since August 2007, according to the New York State Department of Labor. The finance industry in New York is expected to lose 56,800 jobs from the end of 2007 to the beginning of 2012, according to projections from the Independent Budget Office, a publicly funded information agency.
John Carbonaro was let go as a floor clerk by Bank of America in January 2009, and despite his job-hunting efforts, remains a "Mr. Mom." Joe Morrone, a laid-off trading clerk from Prudential, has been unemployed for two years and struggles to support his daughters and grandson. He has had stints as a deli worker, a doorman and a bouncer. "I used to have three cars," Mr. Morrone says. "Now I share one."
The result is an unlikely stream of erstwhile Wall Street pros need help.
"I've got 'em all -- Lehman, AIG, Citi," says Bob Townley, head of Manhattan Youth in Tribeca, an organization that gave the Arayas financial assistance to pay for childcare while they are working. "I can hear it in a parent's voice when there's trouble. Others are too proud to ask for help."
Many of these parents once made donations to Mr. Townley's program. Now they are asking for aid to pay for their kids. Mr. Araya's daughters, ages 6 and 7, are in an after-school program at Mr. Townley's center.
Nowadays, during Mr. Araya's late nights at the Palm, reminders of his old life crop up when former colleagues come in. Some are encouraging and offer hugs. Others sneer, he says. "The way they look at you, you know they're thinking negatively," he says. Some are laid-off like him, and ask if the restaurant is hiring.
As a host, Mr. Araya wears a suit and tie. He's on his feet most of the day, either escorting guests to tables or manning the podium at the front, answering phone calls, managing reservations on the computer and fielding orders from wait staff and managers.
Although he's thankful for the work at the Palm, paydays can be bittersweet. "At the end of the week, I get my paycheck," he says, "and I think, 'I used to make this much in a day.' "
Mr. Araya's wife, Dennise, has gone back to work as an administrative assistant for a construction company and leaves home at 6 a.m. Mr. Araya often works until one or two in the morning and on weekends, leaving little time for the family to be together. He calls his daughters every night during his break at the restaurant on his cellphone to say good night.
Mr. Araya now is the one who gets his children ready for school. He's learned to tie pony tails, inadvertently shrunk sweaters in the wash and knows which grocery store has the best price on milk.
The Arayas stopped dining out, pulled their daughters out of ballet and tumbling classes, and dropped cable television -- even though the flat screen he bought when they first moved in still sits in the living room.
Last month, for the first time, the Arayas didn't make a mortgage payment. Their savings are almost depleted. The mortgage, taxes and fees for the family's condo cost $6,200. Combined, he and Denise bring in $4,000 a month. Three months ago, he and his wife applied to restructure their mortgage. The bank told them it is still processing the request. They fear foreclosure and bankruptcy.
Recently, their oldest daughter asked Mr. Araya if the family would have to move. He told her he didn't know. She countered: "How much money do we need?"
"The way she looked at me," Mr. Araya says, "I could tell she was counting the money in her piggy bank." He went into the bathroom and cried. After a few minutes, he dried his eyes and walked back into the living room.
Mr. Araya, the son of a cab driver, grew up in a working-class neighborhood in nearby Queens. Like thousands of New Yorkers, he used a Wall Street job to vault into a comfortable lifestyle that included his apartment -- bought for $960,000 four years ago -- in Manhattan's Battery Park City neighborhood and family vacations to Cabo San Lucas, Disneyland and Las Vegas.
The Arayas purchased the condo in 2005 with a 20% down payment and a pre-construction price. The proximity of the two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment to the trading pit allowed Mr. Araya to spend more time with his family and less time commuting. Ms. Araya diligently managed the family budget with Excel charts to ensure that they had no credit card debt, good credit histories even an emergency fund saved over five years that is now depleted. Mr. Araya says he would be lucky to find a buyer and break even on the apartment now.
Mr. Araya dropped out of college in 1992 to work in the pits, where he quickly advanced from runner to trader. He shifted between large firms like J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and smaller shops like Aren Brokerage Service, the firm that eventually laid him off.
A wrestler in high school, Mr. Araya was known for elbowing his way through the loud commodities pits. Nights were late; mornings began at 4:30 am, fueled by coffee.
"You'd clock in and just try to kill each other till the bell rang," Mr. Araya says.
He had a knack for the Merc job. He could gauge from the roar of traders' voices how the market was faring. He gained loyal clients, and was confident enough to engage in profane shouting matches with them on the phone. Mr. Araya still has dreams about the hand signals traders use to indicate orders. His trading jacket hangs in his closet.
Every day lately, he spends two hours online, trolling job Web sites like Monster.com and e-mailing former colleagues. The leads have dried up, since some of them are laid off themselves. He's contacted headhunters, been on a dozen interviews in the last year and a half, but nothing has come of them.
"It was a hard reality at first," he says. "I used to see unemployed people and think they were lazy, that it was all on them. Now it's happened to me."
Write to Mary Pilon at [email protected]
http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work...-to-Serving-It
I do and I'm glad it has opened his eyes.
"It was a hard reality at first," he says. "I used to see unemployed people and think they were lazy, that it was all on them. Now it's happened to me."
I didn't feel sorry for him from the first sentence on. If he had saved even SOME of that, he'd be able to get by.
Article is too long ...
But no I dont feel sorry for him one bit!
*note to Blake, use shorter articles*
The article does say that their "savings is almost depleted".
He along with all the other oil traders (aka speculators) are one reason oil went so high last summer. There was a bunch of ex-Enron traders that got together and starting trading oil futures contracts helping to drive up the price of oil....and make them a fortune.
I don't feel bad for this guy at all.
yes i feel sorry for him and for all people who have lost their job...
i could be him tomorrow, so why wouldn't i have some compassion.
I'll pass along your concern to the article's author and to the wall street journal.*note to Blake, use shorter articles*
I don't understand your reaction since you don't know the guy.
Sincerely,
CuckingFunt
The only critique I have is that they should have moved long ago even if it meant foreclosure. A family of four can live on their income but not where they live.
I feel compassion for them but not as much as I do for all the people who have lived that way their entire life trying to get ahead. She has to work and they work split shifts, lots of families do that.
You're the bomb Blake!!!
I don't feel sorry for him at all, it's a sign of the times. This guy had the ability for a really nice nest egg and he screwed it up.
do you feel sorry for mc hammer?
There's no indication of his involvement in that one way or the other. As a guy who doesn't have a degree, I doubt he was in the "club" of assholes who were causes of the current problems.
If I had to bet who was gaming the system to drive up profits, and I had to chose between a guy who rose up from nothing and had to prove himself with no degree, who is married and chose to live closer to work to spend more time with his kids; or the arrogant, en led piece of with the Harvard degree that has glossed himself a "master of the universe" whose only concern is himself - I know who I would put my money on.
The people who ed this whole thing up are not working as hosts at a restaurant. They've pulled out their millions and are now trying to "fix" things by lobbying against meaningful reform of the system.
So yeah, I fell sorry for this guy.
I have sympathy for anyone who is struggling, and all the more for people like the main man in the above article who is working hard to better his situation.
By and large the 25,000 people who have lost their jobs in NY are not the ones who caused this mess - most of them are honest hardworking people - low or mid-level employees who are the most expendable and easiest to fire.
The people we should be holding in contempt - and demanding accountability from - are the people still in charge who, to this very day, have not faced one day of jail, had their professional liscenses revoked, or been forced to return the millions and millions in bonuses they recieved for guiding these companies to record "profits" over the past five years.
in a lot of respects, yeah......kind of the same as Mike Tyson.
Young guys making loads of money, had managers and people around them taking advantage and basically sucking them dry.
Yeah, they should have moved -- otherwise, they couldn't have been expected to do much more.
He COULD get a job as a waiter or janitor or something
he doesn't have to be broke.
RIF. He took a job as a host in a restaurant.
Agree w/ the moving comment, but I can undeerstand how any family would be hesitant to do so when their only options are sell at a (large) loss, since nobody is moving to the financial center right now, or just walk away.
Yeah, I feel sorry for the guy. Anyone who doesn't is just because they are an envious piece of !
I really don't get where all this ing hate towards well off people comes from! The guy worked hard to have the lifestyle had. Now he has to start again from zero. Its ed up. I hope he makes it back.
yes i do
I have empathy and compassion for the man. Why exactly are people bashing this guy? Sounds to me like he and his wife lived within their means.
Just because the guy has nicer that you doesn't mean he was pissing his money away.Ms. Araya diligently managed the family budget with Excel charts to ensure that they had no credit card debt, good credit histories even an emergency fund saved over five years that is now depleted.
Based on that article, he busted his ass to get where he was only to essentially be one of the many victims of the recession.
My aunt and her husband recently lost their house, had to sell one of their two cars and their boat and move into a 3 bedroom apartment with their 3 kids. The husband is a housing contractor and ran out of work when the housing boom busted. They had a nice home, two newish vehicles, a boat, and a comfortable lifestyle. They managed their money well, didn't live beyond their means and had enough money in savings to pay all their bills and expenses for a full year. Slowly, but surely that money savings dried up and work wasn't coming in. They worked very hard to provide a nice life for themselves and their kids. Do they deserve to be bashed because of a situation that wasn't their fault?
Yes, I feel sorry for him, and commend him for being a hard worker. I'll even bet that two bedroom condo for $6,000 a month isn't half as nice as where he used to live. Bad time to sell also. He's between a rock and a hard place here.
happens, and I've been financially knocked down a few times too. It's rough working two jobs when you have to, but I've done it. So can others. One good thing will come of this. His children will see that life is something to work towards, and likely gain better values than having things handed to them.
Last edited by Wild Cobra; 06-03-2009 at 06:22 PM.
Sounds like a pretty bad situation to be in. Have to feel sorry for him.
That said, he's not without fault. $200,000 per year isn't that much in NYC. If you have a mortgage that is more than 1/3rd of your income, this is the risk you run. Add in the fact that he was in an industry that is volatile by definition plus his lack of transferable training ... and he should have planned better for a worst case situation.
But yeah, he's far from the first person to make the mistake.
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