Employees, welcome. Newsletter #7. O what a feeling, Froomyota.
If you’re reading this, I’m dead.
Not literally, but certainly spiritually.
“What the hell Lucinda,” I hear you say. “You can’t die, you have an Instagram page with 34.2K followers and a card game that needs to sell at least 200 more units before Christmas!”
Let me explain. This morning, I went for a swim at Bondi Beach.
Everyone says “you never regret a swim”, so I thought I would give it a go.
I got dunked like a loser. White water blasting straight into my face, disorientation. What I imagine it would feel like to chew 5 Gum.
What people fail to mention when they say “you never regret a swim” is the very real possibility of getting slammed and coming out with a booty hole full of sand.
So yes, I absolutely regret that swim, I regret having to scrape globs of wet sand out of my gusset and mostly I regret the cold, wet walk home.
This is a very longwinded way of saying, things that a “right” are, in my experience, often “wrong”.
What’s another one of those wrong things, you ask?
Dogs.
I’ve been sitting on this one for a while.
Loving dogs become a social necessity. Meanwhile, criticising them has become completely unacceptable.
I posted a picture of a really ugly dog on my (now-private, swag) Instagram, with the following sentiment:
And quite literally 10 seconds after I posted it, the outraged DMs barrelled in, hitting me harder than an aquatic torrent to the head.
The approach of the first message was confusing, to say the least:
What about Ted? I’m asking myself the same question. What about Ted do you think would change my mind? I’m sure he brings you plenty of joy. Yet here I am, unmoved.
Others were deeply offended:
Aggression is par of the course when you voice an unpopular opinion. But thankfully, my admission emboldened some employees to come forward and share their stories.
And my personal favourite: traumatic first-hand experiences.
To clarify, I don’t “hate” dogs.
I’m just confused about when and why liking them became a personality trait.
I like doing poos and I’m often proud of them. They’re impressive. But how do you think it would go down if, at a dinner party, I whipped out a picture of my little creation swimming in a porcelain pond?
I’d be reprimanded.
My love of using the toilet isn’t something I’m allowed share. It’s not something I can write in the bio of a dating profile, or slip into conversation with a barista.
And yet, dingo die hards are out here sharing pictures of Ziggy or Spot or Poochie and us animally-impartial folk are expected to “aww” and “cuuuute” from a place of deep indifference.
I’m offended by that.
Back to our mate in the convenience store.
Apparently this thick slab o dog is a well-known breed, known as a Bull Terrier.
The Bull Terrier just so happens to have many lookalikes, as sent in by various FW executives:
Broom broom I’m in me mooms car
I was reading another Substack newsletter yesterday, it was by a physician-scientist who is trying to make complex concepts digestible for the everyday person.
There was one post about consciousness, and how it’s one of the final things that we’re unable to fully understand on account of being ‘in’ it:
Makes you think.
If a table can have feelings, then my poo could too. Just like Tom Jones and your Bull Terrier.
I love you guys,
CEO F