Despite the general academic stress permeating reading period (the days between the last day of class and the first day of final exams), I finished strong by working my final buttery shift of the semester.
Each residential college has a buttery, a late-night spot selling inexpensive snacks to hungry college students. The snacks vary from chips and cookies to quesadillas and sandwiches. Students are employed by the buttery and work alongside their friends to provide quality food to the Yale community. This is also all within the vicinity of a lounging area and pool, ping-pong, and foosball tables. Personally, I love that instead of calling each buttery by its proper term, each college adapts its own cute nickname for their buttery, usually emphasizing the “butt” of the word. Trumbull (the best college) has the Trumbutt, while other colleges have… less exciting names. I won’t publicly roast them here, but they know who they are. Every Wednesday night from 11:30 pm to 1 am, my friend Chloe and I run the Trumbutt like a tight ship.
Actually that’s not true; it was largely very chill and we might have given our friends some discounts if they stopped by. We are working for fellow students, so the whole “customer service” voice and attitude was not really needed here, luckily. We were also free to eat buttery food ourselves while we worked. I usually opted for a peach Snapple and cookie dough: I read over 10 Snapple fun facts over the semester and I can only remember that “flamingos only eat with their heads upside down.”
Delicious buttery creation.
By the end of the semester, I have become an expert at making quesadillas. This is kind of a wild statement being that I’ve eaten quesadillas my whole life, particularly in my childhood, but I was always just eating them, not making them. Now, however, the Trumbutt has changed this detail about my life, although I do prefer to eat quesadillas made by other people. Anyway, the buffalo chicken quesadilla is hands down the most popular Trumbutt order, and with good reason. The combination of ranch, hot sauce, and dino nuggets within two tortillas makes for a great late-night snack. I actually only had a Trumbutt quesadilla during my last shift, but it was well worth the wait.
I don’t know if I will be working the buttery next semester, but I am glad Chloe and I made it through to the end. Sometimes it was difficult to leave the comfort of my bedroom to go work in the buttery, but once there I always found it enjoyable. Beyond cooking food and selling snacks, the little details of working somewhere like the buttery made me happy. We had a speaker available and I enjoyed curating my Trumbutt playlist throughout the semester. I did not know most of the students who came to the buttery and it was nice to meet new people and catch up with the ones I did know. I also enjoyed eavesdropping in on the conversations going on in the general buttery area and sharing glances with Chloe when we heard outrageous statements.
Thank you Trumbutt for making my Wednesday nights fun!
