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 (AXΩ) 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…