From Ordering Steak and Lobster, to Serving It

By MARY PILON

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.

In
Carlos Araya's new job as a host at New York City's Palm Restaurant, he
sometimes seats colleagues from his former life on Wall Street.

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.

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"
Those who sneer at him will hopefully get their due in the not too distant future.
"

- Henry Grimmelsman

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 mary.pilon@wsj.com