This ethnographic study showcases life stories of campus custodians and their interactions with members of other campus subcultures to reveal insights about higher education. This manuscript illuminates the ways the worldwide economic calamities, beginning in 2008, resulted in the implementation of corporate‐like ideologies. Analyses reveal how custodians interpreted, coped with, and subverted these mandates. This bottom‐up view of the university provides a unique vantage point to enrich understanding about how universities manage change.