Every Friday morning, I wake up at 5:15am, feed the cat early because she’s insufferable if I don’t, dress in layers like that kid from A Christmas Story, grab my headlamp and emotional support water bottle and take a short drive to the lake. Ten minutes from home, I arrange small pieces of wood and paper in a pile, try to keep the feeling in my fingers, and do my best to start four fires.
I’ve worked many jobs in my life and could fill a boring book with them, but what a majority of them had in common is they took so much out of me: joy, excitement, the will to get out of bed. Making a living has always felt like it cost me a lot. Particularly customer service, of which my foray was endless. Food service was easily accessible and as a theater kid— introvert or no— expected. I was fine at customer service until I wasn’t anymore (now we call this burnout) and I did not think I’d be back.
In my new hometown, there’s a company called Cedar + Stone. They custom build saunas for your home (if you are a person with what I call, “sauna money”), and have a Nordic sauna and cold plunge facility on the shores of Lake Superior, the GLOAT, where I started working part time as a Sauna Guide in October of last year.
A very brief interlude for those who, like me several months ago, know very little about saunas. They’re a small room, usually heated to 160 - 200 degrees Fahrenheit by electricity or wood through a heap of thermal mass (a pile of rocks stacked around the heat source). You sit in the small room, sweat, add water, gossip, process your life, step outside, repeat. Saunas can be barrel shaped, built into the interior of a home, tucked away in the corner of your local YMCA locker room, or, as a guest recently informed me, in the Jewish cultural center in Minneapolis where 50-something-year-old men engage in calisthenics while wearing Rocky-style sweat suits.
A good percentage of Minnesota's white population are of Finnish descent and in Finland, it is expected, encouraged, endorsed, and other “e” words to sauna regularly. Finland boasts 1 sauna for every 1.7 people. There are more saunas than cars. You’d be hard pressed to find someone in Finland (and probably in Northern Minnesota) that has never been in a sauna.
Now. Back to Sauna Guides.
“Ah yes, a sauna guide.” You’re probably thinking, “I know exactly what that is and require no further explanation.”
Have you ever been to the sauna in your gym or somewhere similar and thought, “Wtf am I supposed to do in here?” Don’t you think your experience could have been better if there was a pleasant but awkward stranger who smelled a bit like burned hair providing historical context, aromatherapy, and mediocre jokes about being a fire goblin? Sounds not weird at all, right? That is exactly what I do.
Aside from the brief fantasies I’d entertained about opening a bookstore, I never expected to return to customer service, and I certainly didn’t expect to enjoy customer service but here I am, enjoying it, and I have some theories on why that is:
Any job that one is not wholly reliant on for their survival becomes better. One day a week at the sauna allows me to work my remote position from home four days a week, which nearly covers my expenses. I’m free to pick up shifts at the sauna as they’re available. Burnout is easier to avoid when you’re working less.
I’ve never seen a sauna customer leave mad. In food service you could smell people getting hangrier as the restaurant got busier and that shit was so stressful. At the sauna, the physiological change people undergo is a wild mood booster. Some folks come in a bit jumpy, nervous, short with me, or (more often) short with each other, but fifteen minutes in a hot room will change you whether you want it to or not.
My coworkers, each one of whom is interesting, intelligent, and fun, are all as independent as the job is. I’m not relying on a kitchen to get food prepared for me in a timely manner and no one is counting on me to take care of those drink orders asap. I make sure the windows are clean, am friendly with the guests, and work diligently to not burn anything down.
I get to be outside. Your girl is just out here doing hot girl shit: chopping firewood, soaking up sunshine and woodsmoke, and sipping coffee while staring at the watery horizon and contemplating life.
My first two months at this job, I was suspicious. What’s the dirty secret? When will I see the shitty underbelly of SaunaLyfe? Who’s the secret asshole? Where’s the toxic culture? IS IT A CULT?! I once told my manager I was going to do x,y, and z before heading out and he said, “You’re welcome to, but if you want to leave now, you should. Be sure to take care of yourself, you’ve been here all day.” And he was being sincere. It was not a test to ensure I was committed to my ‘sauna family’. No one at this job has said to me, “If there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean”, and the other day, I was chatting with a coworker while two other coworkers were playing catch with a snowball. Like a Disney movie with fewer dead moms. Earnestly adorable.
While learning to start fires in sub-zero temperatures has been as humbling as it has empowering, my favorite part of work is the cold plunge. The cold plunge is an optional part of the sauna experience, though 95% of the people I host interact with it. A hole cut into a dock in the bay of Lake Superior allows guests to climb down to a submerged platform in water that is currently barely above freezing. If you haven’t had the experience of submerging your body into near-freezing water, all you need to know is: it’s REALLY FUCKING HARD. I guide all kinds of people through the experience every week: children under ten, adults over seventy, couples, friends, mortal enemies, work colleagues. It is very cool to support folks as they do something so hard and I’ve been surprised by the amount of people who are willing to be so vulnerable in front of a stranger/fire goblin.
Cold plunge is having a moment right now, as you can read about/listen to here, here, here, and here (full disclosure: that last one is a Culture Study podcast that is behind a paywall). I’m not a doctor and will not be proselytizing cold plunge in this newsletter, but I engage with the practice about once a week because it makes me feel great and I think it’s fun. I’m a simple lady and those reasons are plenty sufficient for me.
I’m a little ashamed to say that I’m not done waiting to find out if there’s something terrible about this job. But that says more about me than it does about the organization. My suspicion about the necessity of toxic culture in workplaces stems from, as you might suspect, a vast and varied experience with many toxic workplaces. But until that other shoe drops, I’ll continue to daydream about leaving my remote work job to start fires and sweat with the sauna cult full time.
What else is new?
Maybe you’ve noticed the title of this newsletter has changed! The Anti-Niche is now Cult of Friday. Is it about having a misplaced or disproportionate amount of admiration for a single day of the week and/or my cat, Friday? Is it because I like the sounds of those words and many of the other ideas I had were already taken? We may never know. Please hold for some incoming design updates to snaz up the place.
I should note that it’s pure coincidence that I debuted the name change alongside the sauna cult piece. Millennials and their cults, amirite?
Self promotion! I had TWO humor pieces published in January, which is more than I had published in 2022 and 2023 combined. If you’d like to read some (more) silly Millennial musings, check out Missed Connections: Traditional Life Milestones Seeking a Millennial in Slackjaw and Reasons Why I, A Millennial, Am Not Having Children in the Belladonna (this is my Belladonna debut and I’m thrilled about it!)
Here’s Friday:
We got her this new bed and put it in front of the heating vent. She thinks this is okay.
LOVE the new name!! Excited to be a part of this cult.
What a cool job! What a cool cat! What hot fire!