When it comes to Gritty, the sublime mascot of the NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers, you’re either scared of what he’s capable of or scared of how much you love him. Sometimes it’s both. However you feel about this giant orange chaos monster, you can’t deny that he’s a marketing masterpiece, a living, breathing meme, and that he is now three years old after celebrating his birthday on Friday (but rumor has it that he has been around for much longer).

Morning Brew caught up with Gritty to discuss the big three: social media, sports, and Philly cheesesteaks.

If Gritty went public as a company, what would your trading ticker be?

GRITTY. I’m already public. I may root for the Flyers but I belong to the people.

On balance, do you think social media is good or bad for society?

Yes, I do. There’s a lot of negativity on the internet and oftentimes it finds those who go looking for it. I like to keep my ish positive and entertaining for my Gritizens.

What do you see as the main purpose of a sports mascot?

I guess your typical sports mascot exists to take photos with fans, start a few crowd chants, and support the local community. I do that stuff, too, though I wouldn’t describe myself as typical. To quote my second favorite playwright: “I am not what I am.”—Willy Shakespeare

I think what Mr. Shakespeare was trying to say was that although I am a sports mascot, I don’t allow the construct of sports mascottery to define who I am or what I do. I have so much more to give.

Pat’s or Geno’s?

Any true Philadelphian knows that you can’t provide a correct answer to a wrong question.

Would you ever go solo?

Never.

Which social platform is best for engagement with fans?

They all have their perks I guess. I like to engage with my Gritizens the old-fashioned way: face to fur.

What’s the best hockey movie?

There are the obvious picks...Miracle, Mighty Ducks, The Tooth Fairy starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (ppl don’t talk about it but this movie put DJ on the map...there is no Jungle Cruise without The Tooth Fairy), but the best hockey movie is easily MVP: Most Valuable Primate. Sometimes I just kick my feet up at lunch and throw it in my Blu-ray player. That whole MVP trilogy will go down as one of the best in modern cinema. How they ever found a chimpanzee that was good at hockey, skateboarding, and snowboarding is beyond me. But that’s Hollywood.

If you find yourself wanting more Gritty (and who doesn’t?), you can read our full interview here.

This interview has been edited, condensed, and translated from Gritty’s native tongue for clarity.

Each week, our workplace whisperer Shane Loughnane answers a reader-submitted question about work in 2021. Anything bothering you at work? Ask Shane here.

I am a senior-level manager at a company of about 125 people. Recently, my organization held its first big summer outing in two years—and my first, since I had only been with the company for 12 months. It was a sunset tour around the bay, drink tickets included. I had to skip the event to meet a compressed deadline. I was the only one in my relatively small department who could not go. My boss never inquired ahead of time nor said anything afterward about my not being able to attend. Is he a clueless jerk for this, or 'dems just the breaks?—Jill

I’ll start by making the case for your boss: Some people value and practice discretion differently than others—if your boss is still getting to know you, there’s a decent chance that his not inquiring about your RSVP was out of respect for your privacy (as opposed to being too busy divvying up your allotted drink tickets). Incidentally, consider that he may not realize that the reason you had to pass was in fact work-related.

Even as we extend some benefit of the doubt, it’s hard to justify the fact that he hasn’t checked in afterward with something as simple as, “We missed you at the summer outing!” I suppose there are further limbs we could climb out on—him not wanting to make you feel bad about having missed out, or perhaps you’ve been appointed as the Designated Survivor of the organization and they’ve simply neglected to tell you. However you slice it, though, it’s just not a great look.

Having established that I’m “Team Jill,” where do we go from here? Before pressing George Costanza’s jerk store line into action, it’s worth considering how your first 12 months have gone otherwise. Was this omission part of a broader pattern of behavior from your boss, or an isolated act of thoughtlessness? If the former, I think you owe it to yourself to have a conversation with him about the impact these actions are having on your overall job satisfaction.

If the incident feels more singular, I might leave it alone at this point (although if you wanted to address it, I wouldn’t blame you). When the next company outing rolls around, initiate a chat with your boss about any conflicting work on your team’s plate. If there’s no realistic solution where everyone can attend without jeopardizing a key deadline, then perhaps it’s someone else’s turn to sit a good time out. Your department may be small, but there’s no reason ’dem breaks (and ’dem drink tickets) can’t be distributed equitably.

Have a question about work you want to ask Shane? Write in here. And coming soon...HR Brew. Be one of the first subscribers to our upcoming newsletter on all things human resources.

You may have heard that a deadline to suspend the debt ceiling is rapidly approaching, and if lawmakers don’t do anything it could lead to “economic catastrophe,” in the words of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

But what if we told you there was a solution to the debt ceiling fiasco so crazy...it just might work?

The solution: Yellen could have the Treasury mint a $1 trillion platinum coin, deposit it at the Fed to “retire” loads of US federal debt, and then enable the government to carry on with business as usual without having to worry about defaulting on its existing debt.

But can the Treasury really do that? Yes. According to Section 31 US Code § 5112...

• “The Secretary may mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coins in accordance with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions as the Secretary, in the Secretary’s discretion, may prescribe from time to time.”

The law is crystal clear, and has been deemed kosher by numerous academics. “The statute clearly does authorize the issuance of trillion-dollar coins,” Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law professor, told Washington Monthly back in 2013.

In fact, nothing says we have to stop at $1 trillion. Yellen could go big with a $10 trillion coin, hypothetically. As Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal explains, none of this would lead to inflation because it’s merely an “accounting trick”—not an influx of money into the economy.

Have we tried this before? The $1 trillion platinum coin idea seems to pop up every time the US faces a debt ceiling crunch. It was first introduced by a Georgia lawyer in 2010 and gained traction during the debt-ceiling crisis of 2011.

Things really turned up in 2013, when the government was...you guessed it, facing another debt ceiling deadline. The hashtag #MintTheCoin became popular on Twitter, and economists like Paul Krugman advocated for unleashing the coin. “If we have a crisis over the debt ceiling, it will be only because the Treasury Department would rather see economic devastation than look silly for a couple of minutes,” he wrote.

But each time the $1 trillion coin is mentioned as a way of resolving debt ceiling problems, the people in charge dismiss it as a distraction from Congress doing its job. “Neither the Treasury nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to produce platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit,” The Treasury wrote during...well, yes, another debt ceiling emergency in 2015.

As for our current predicament, the Biden administration rejected the minting of the $1 trillion coin yet again last week.

Bottom line: Perhaps some enterprising future Treasury Secretary will manifest the platinum coin into existence, but for now it remains as mythical as Camelot.

Welcome to Open House, the only newsletter section that is so fall-themed right now it HURTS. We’ll give you a few facts about a listing and you try to guess how much it costs.

CIRCA

Today’s listing is located in Woolwich, Maine, about a 40-minute drive south of the capital, Augusta. Woolwich is surrounded by three different rivers and Merrymeeting Bay, so this home is technically on a peninsula (go geography!). This 8,000-square-foot Vintage Colonial was built in 1780 and is what true autumn dreams are made of. Amenities include:

• 5 beds, 5 baths
• Bonus log cabin AND barn
• HUGE porch you could get lost in
• At least 20 Revolutionary War ghosts

How much to curl up by one of the many fireplaces and sip hot cider in the Maine countryside?

1. Memestocks and Reddit redesigns. (Margins)
2. When McDonald’s came to Denmark. (Matt Bruenig)
3. The secrets of the world’s greatest free diver. (GQ)
4. Earth’s submarine fiber optic cable network. (Reddit)
5. Gig workers are uncertain, scared, and barely scraping by. (Rest of World)
6. The childcare industry is too important to fail. (Men Yell at Me)
7. How I amassed more T-shirts than I can store. (New Yorker)
8. The power of the pentatonic scale in music. (World Science Festival)
9. Paradise lost: The rise and ruin of couchsurfing.com. (Input)
10. Homegrown medical-grade cannabis requires some complex technology. (Emerging Tech Brew)

Step up. This fall, make it happen—stylishly. With Cole Haan’s seasonal essentials, you can be ready to head back to work, school, and LIFE. Check out their new collection here, then become an Above & Beyond member to get 10% off your first purchase.*

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Welcome back to Morning Brew's Meme Battle, where we crown a single memelord every Sunday.

Today's winner: Martin Vogel in Germany

This week's challenge: You can find the new meme template here for next Sunday. Once you're done making your meme, submit it at this link for consideration.