I Was a Sorority Busboy During College

I paid my way through college with a combination of a Stafford Loan and working menial jobs. But often, there were shortfalls, and I couldn’t afford some expenses that would come up, like food.

Fortunately, when I was a fraternity pledge in the first semester of my freshman year, I was sent to cover for one of the brothers as a busboy for a sorority. I went there and worked for about an hour and a half, setting up tables, serving food, bussing tables, and cleaning dishes, pots, and pans, in exchange for a hot meal.

After my first semester, I moved into an apartment and no longer had a meal plan, so I had to figure out a way to eat. In addition to being cash poor, there were no grocery stores near campus, and I didn’t have a car.

So, I headed over to the Alpha Chi Omega (AX?) sorority house and asked about being a busboy, and my “will work for food” side hustle got started. Some sororities paid the busboys money in addition to food, but I was just getting food, and that was fine because I was working at my girlfriend’s sorority.

My fraternity house didn’t have a dining option. The story I was told as a pledge was that there was once a kitchen that burned down, and they turned the area into another bar. Whatever the reason, we didn’t have a kitchen, so many of the sorority busboys were my brothers. That was a good time.

That also led to some hijinks, as we would sometimes try to finish early so we could sneak off with some eggs, tomatoes, and stuff from the kitchen and ambush our brothers at other sororities as they left their busboy jobs.

When we weren’t grabbing food from the kitchen to throw at our brothers, we’d also put good food in garbage bags and put the bags outside to take home after we got off. It was a nice, if disreputable, way to get some staples to bring home, since we only had the option to work on weekdays, at lunch, and dinner.

Sometimes, when there was a rush event or something, we’d be put into service as cooks, too. Well, not in the kitchen. We’d be outside grilling hot dogs and hamburgers. It was a lot of fun meeting everyone in the sorority and eating real food, because ramen or mac and cheese without milk or butter got really old.

During my time at AX?, I was voted as the “sweetheart” and got to be on their composite.

The guy who was picked the year before had his name listed with his first initial, and then his middle and last name. That seemed cheesy and pretentious to me, so I figured I’d follow suit and have my name listed as “S. Brendan Collins.” It was a dopey inside joke that only made sense to me, but I enjoyed it.

There were times when the girls would forget we were there, as we worked in the background, and we’d hear some spicy gossip. When dated parties and formals came along, available busboys were default dates for girls who didn’t have one at the last minute.

After a breakup with my girlfriend, it was awkward to continue bussing at her sorority, so I bounced around at some other houses before ending up at Kappa Alpha Theta (KA?) for the rest of college.

The menus were pretty similar at each sorority, and I remember one in particular that I didn’t like was veggie lasagna. It tasted fine, though not as good as lasagna with meat. Without that protein, I would feel hungry again hours later.

Before I started working as a busboy, I was pissed off that I had to work for food in addition to my regular jobs at school, but in the end, I made some of my best memories during those lunches and dinners.

Originally published at https://shawncollins512.substack.com.

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