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There's a harrowing story in the Wall Street Journal today about a guy who's gone from ordering filet mignon at midtown's Palm Restaurant to working at their Tribeca location. No schadenfruede here; Carlos Araya, the son of a cab driver from Queens, worked his way up to become a successful crude oil trader on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The father of two young girls, he lost his job in 2007 when the financial industry got necklaced with a flaming tire. Now he's a host at The Palm. His wife went back to work as an administrative assistant; together they're pulling in $4,000 a month, but they're starting to miss mortgage payments on their Battery Park City apartment, and Araya tells the Journal, "At the end of the week, I get my paycheck and I think, 'I used to make this much in a day.'" Most awkward are the old colleagues still dining at The Palm; according to the article, "some are encouraging and offer hugs. Others sneer. 'The way they look at you, you know they're thinking negatively,' he says." And still others come in to ask if the restaurant is hiring.
Ex-Wall Street Trader Now Works Where He Used to Eat
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It's the same media that NEVER mentioned Muslims' hatred of Israel as a possible motive for 9/11.
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a successful trader crude oil trader ?
the internets has resulted in a tragic lowering of writing standards and typographical consistency.
1-800-Boo-Hooo
ask for Department Waa-Waa
sorry carlos, your situation sounds shitty, but you were part of this twisted, speculative, BULLshit machine -- so you got what was inevitable. sadly, many of your superiors have not suffered to your extent. but you can't light bags of shit on fire, then complain when you end up singed and covered in crap.
also, i'd be spitting in your ex-colleagues food if i were you.
Why would he seek a degrading employment situation where he is obviously bound to see old, sneering colleagues. Are there no other restaurants he could have applied to?
He's actually working at the new Palm in Tribeca, not the Midtown one, a short walk from home, I guess.
I don't understand what is degrading about his employment situation. It sounds to me like he gets up each day and puts in a honest day's work at a legitimate business. It's not like he is a criminal or a prostitute.
Obviously he think it's beneath him after having been one of those Master of the Universe asshats making $200k to a lowly restaurant loser making $25k. By the sneering of his former colleagues who thinks the same way, that they would rather jump out of a window first before take grovel as a busboy.
He was fired in 2007 well before the massive layoffs on Wall Street began leading me to believe he's just a shitty trader...also 200k a year for a 38 year old "trader" on wall street is crap.
Wow, you are an arrogant native.
"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."
Now that's called KARMA.
He's lucky he's got a job in the restaurant industry. They're harder to come by now that everyone is laid off. If anything he's lucky to be able to get cash to pay his bills and have a little extra left over at the end of the month.
Actually, he has nothing extra left over at the end of the month and missed his mortgage payment.
Oh, well, just goes to show I don't really read the articles here anyway.
A recent NY Times article detailed how a little Tex-Mex place in Manhattan had a $23,000/yr kitchen job w/o benefits and got hundreds of applications. Some of the applicants had worked at very high end places and a few had PHDs.
It IS tough out there.
TY angryGod,
I just returned an info subpoena asking about my assets.
I wish I had the guts to write back, IN my dreams etc etc.
they sent back a settlement offer, good luck.
I do have some hot .45 Pb if they come to my door.
I have nothing and have nothing to lose. that includes not a pot to piss in.
He's VERY lucky to have landed that job. I have been fortunate enough to secure some restaurant work to supplement my other freelance income, and I'm very grateful. Then again, my primary profession never encouraged douchey behavior.
I could be remembering things incorrectly, but this feels like the days before the initial dot com boom in which more New Yorkers tended to take on multiple types of work to make ends meet. Afterward, many found their way into offices, and the following generations (though not everyone) somehow made their way through college and the beginning of their careers without ever working a register or busing a table.
If he is as good as he says he is, he would have been trading on his own.
Why would you need to be a trader at a big firm to make that kind of money?
If he is as successful as he is, why can't he just trade on his own?
I would think he would make more money that way.
shoot, I wouldn't mind a job as a Host at The Palm.
So, this guy's hurting. There's a lot of people who are hurting, and didn't get to have as much fun as he did before. Cry me a river.
Some people in this thread seem bitter.
I'm supposed to feel bad for a couple pulling in $4k a month??? LMAO.
While I don't exactly have reams of sympathy for this guy - plenty of people have it worse - $4k per month for a couple with two kids and a mortgage ain't a whole lot. It's not exactly destitute, but it's low enough that money is a concern.
'Course if I were this guy, I'd be selling my apartment and moving to a cheaper part of town...but that's me.
I would be living out of an RV.
Where would you keep the Pb?
why in the glovebox, of course.
where it should be in TV and Movies.
when the good times came back, I still saved and got burnt.
cash is king and no bank accounts.
Who's going to buy that apartment in this market? This guy is screwed all around. What he should have done is not buy a place in Manhattan for 960K, and gotten a place where he grew up in Queens or Brooklyn for half that amount. Sure, his commute would be longer, but he would have half the nut he's got to cover now.
If there's anything to be learned by everyone out of this recession, is that when the good times come back, don't use it as an excuse to spend every damn penny you have, and save double what you were putting away.
Once you start rolling in the big bucks you feel some sort of entitlement. It's like I have to live this luxury lifestyle still, enough though I don't have the money for it anymore.
Didn't bank any of it? Hard to feel sorry. And, are we to believe the best he could do is wait tables? No banks keen to pick up a guy with his skill set at a discount? Hard to believe.
"he lost his job in 2007 when the financial industry got necklaced with a flaming tire."
I certainly hope we will be taking this up with the South Africans that did this.
Oil did not peak until July 2008. The flaming tire did not land until Lehman died in September 2008. Was this guy trading oil for subprime mortgages? I wish him luck, but it seems unlikely that he was fired as a result of the economy collapsing a year before the economy collapsed.
The firings did start in 2007, however in 2007 the only people being fired were people who did't know what they were doing and were lucky they still had a job. The massive layoffs that led to talented people being let go didn't start until the 2nd half of 2008.
The economy began collapsing in the summer/fall of 2007, but neither the media nor the government, at the time, were willing to admit it. They were putting their heads in the sand. They only officially acknowledged it in the winter of 2008.
Fair enough, but oil traders were still doing pretty well for themselves, were they not?
Anybody who had a mortgage, two kids, a wife, and was living in downtown NYC, yet was splurging on $200 bottles of wine while only making $200,000 a year (and apparently saving little) obviously had zero financial sense. If he was, say living in Dallas or Houston he wouldn't have had a problem, but NYC, not so much!